031 Why Your Brand Might Be Boring (Soz!)
Unpack why your brand might be blending into the background and what you can actually do about it. Without reinventing the wheel 🎡
Quirky Quiz Time 🥳
Which of the following is a common mistake when building a personal brand?
A) Consistently showing up with your voice
B) Trying to copy what everyone else is doing
C) Having a clear, consistent website
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Correct Answer: B) Trying to copy what everyone else is doing - You do you and you will grow 😉
031 Why Your Brand Might Be Boring (Soz!)
Feeling like your personal brand has gone a bit beige 🫠? This livestream digs into the common missteps that make your branding feel flat and what to focus on instead to get that spark (and audience!) back real quick.
Personal branding isn’t just about slick fancy logos or nailing your branding colours. It’s about connection, clarity, and consistency with your TARGET AUDIENCE. We often fall into the trap of copying popular trends or watering ourselves down for mass appeal, which leads to a brand that feels… Well, boring, not to mention inconsistent. By recognising all these patterns and reconnecting with your true values and voice, you can start turning heads again!
It’s easy to overlook how much your digital presentation (think: website glitches, unclear offers, or confusing visuals) impacts your personal brand’s trust. During this livestream we walk togerther through real examples, like fiddly CSS issues on my site (not my real reason I swear), and turns them into teachable moments for you and your audience. You’ll scroll away knowing where to start looking for own branding blind spots and how to get that mojo back
Whether you’re DIYing it or hiring help your brand deserves better than “meh”. Together we look at how to build a toolbox that supports your marketing and business decisions, with resources that actually work the way you do. If your brand’s a little beige, let’s zhuzh it up together! Need a hand untangling your brand spaghetti? The ‘Pick Zoë’s Brain’ sessions are a perfect first step. Whether you need clarity, a content plan, or just to stop overthinking, we’ll make sure your message hits the mark.
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00:00 - Welcome, platform shoutouts, and a quick acknowledgement of Country.
06:00 - What’s been happening at VCC and behind-the-scenes product updates.
12:00 - QR business cards and using smart links for personal brand visibility.
18:00 - VIC Podcasters community updates and podcast monetisation insights.
24:00 - Community Q&A: avoiding common personal branding mistakes.
30:00 - Client Qs: pitfalls in personal branding you didn’t see coming.
36:00 - Updating and breaking the VCC website (oops) and resource planning.
42:00 - What to expect from the Personal Branding Toolkit and visibility tools.
53:00 - Talking templates, CSS, and how tech frustrations play into brand clarity.
01:08:00 - Wrapping up with client comms, email updates, and upcoming launches.
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(Upbeat Music)
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G'day everyone and welcome to the Video Confidence Connect, your weekly live stream where you connect with me, Zoe Wood, the video confidence coach to help you with your personal branding and video marketing strategies. Smashing your marketing mayhem with killer video strategies. The video confidence coach, that's me, emboldens women and non-binary superstars with killer video marketing strategies, empowering them to show up, stand out and smash their goals. Welcome to this Friday, the sixth of the sixth, 2025.
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We'll get to 2026 next year.
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Thank you to everyone who was watching this or listening to this live stream on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and many other platforms. And if you are not watching this live on the hashtag replay squad, feel free to reach out. I make sure to read and respond to all the comments. If you have any comments, thoughts, questions, idea topics for podcast recordings, or if you want an opportunity to come up here with me and have a conversation, please do reach out in the comments below or you can just email me at gd, gd, gday at vcc.training. That's my email. You can find out more information with all the details of the show notes, as are all this live stream podcasts and everything else that we provide at the video confidence coach in the show notes below or to the left or to the right, depending on which platform you're on and which avenue it's looking at.
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Before we officially begin, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the water rung people of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians of the lands on which I conduct my business. I pay my respects to their elders past and present. I stand with the traditional custodians of these lands in working towards a more equal future. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to face discrimination and disadvantage due to our country's colonial past. I stand with them and then fight and guest injustice, always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
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And as of last week, Reconciliation Week has finished up. So for all of the people that I met last week or rekindle our relationships, say hi, well, it was great to meet everyone again. And Reconciliation Week and NADOC Week are kind of the biggest,
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biggest, biggest holidays, not holidays. Well, biggest recognition dates of the calendar,
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I find, or at least down my way, in the events and the clients that I support. So don't worry if you feel overwhelmed by it, I do too. But thank you everyone. And it was great to connect with everyone. And if I haven't reached out to you personally, I will be doing so over this next week because I have a nice long list, which I will be getting to. But if we did not meet, that is all right. I can always meet you at the next NADOC or Reconciliation Week next year.
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What we like to do every week is just give a little bit of a five minute catch up as to what we've been doing at the video confidence coach.
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On my list, I have my quarterly focus. And guess what? We are nearing the end of quarter two and I still don't have my focus.
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(Laughs) Who are we shocked by? Not really.
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So essentially what I've been doing over these past couple of months is reformatting all of my products and really just doing a really big, not deep dive, but a real just exploration into what I offer. People making sure that the products and services that I offer people are actually in line with what I want to provide and also making sure that people understand what I actually provide them. So that's what we've been working on and that's gonna take a little bit more time to go public. Everything's relatively finalized. I'm just getting it overlooked by a couple of people who are not me because my humor works with me, doesn't necessarily work with everyone. And also the dyslexia has a tendency of middling up words that aren't as obvious.
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There's only so much technology can help. So give me another couple of weeks and I'll have those ready for you on my website, vcc.training, where you can check out products and services that we offer to personal brand builders, small business owners, as well as large corporate organizations. But looking over last week, so last week we didn't have a live stream, so I apologize for that. I was ill last week. Essentially, it was a combination of Reconciliation Week, a lot of big events happening one after the other, helping out my clients who, helping my indigenous clients specifically who were very stressed during that week and also doing my best to support what I could. And also, if you haven't noticed, everyone's sick.
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And I had to go up to a couple of in-person events, which due to my immunocompromiseness, I kind of avoid in-person events for people with ICHI and I had to go up to Melbourne. So hi to the boys at Game Time Coffee. If you are in need of some coffee or want to support an indigenous business, make sure you check out Game Time Coffee. We had their launch event during Reconciliation last week for Marvel Stadium.
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And it was a beautiful event. It was great to meet everyone there and great to capture it.
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Everyone was sick though.
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(Laughs) So I felt like I got a little bit sick and then I managed to overcome it. So I probably wasn't sick. I probably was just, to be honest, just overstressed. So thank you everyone for your patience last week for not going through that. So the stream that I had originally set for last week, I'm going to just move all the details to the start of July. So you will not miss out on that stream. I just moved it to the end of my current roster. So at the moment, I'm doing a roundabout, the topics and everything that I like to touch on around five weeks in advance, and then I push back things as they come up because hopefully I don't get sick that often, just in case I do. I have prepared my self.
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(Laughs) So next week coming up, so from the sixth to, I'm looking at the key lender, from the sixth to the 13th of June, 2025, I will be at the virtual, so the virtual co-working event for One Roof. So if you are a One Roof member, say hi, I will see you there and I look forward to catching up there.
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I'm also gonna be, as I mentioned before, launching a bunch of new products over these next coming weeks. So make sure you keep an eye out on my website, vcc.training, or better yet, join my email list because that's where I drop all the information because I know to do that, and I think to do that first.
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So if you want more information, always check that out first, because that's where all the details are.
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(Laughs) Upcoming on the podcasts this week. So we have the Unborrowing Your Brand podcast, which I run weekly,
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answering your personal branding questions, and make sure that if you have any questions that you want to have a full deep dive or a podcast episode on, make sure to put them in the comments. Last week we had episode 62, Convert Smarter QR Business Cards. I have a lot of people look not just at my business cards, but at the way that I utilize QR codes. Yes, due to the great time that we all spent indoors, everyone is quite aware of what QR codes are for, and previous to that, they were pretty much dying out. And now since then, people have been utilizing QR codes because they've become so ubiquitous. It's less and less, but it's more, they've become more of a tool that people are readily using. So say for example, when I go to cafes or such, I've also been using these QR codes
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to send people to where I want to go. So my business card is relatively simple. So my business card has my name, what I do, and my website. And then on the back, it's got a space if I need to write any notes, because I believe that a business card should be practical in the sense of like, it should be practical for use.
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I'm not really a fan of collecting them, not really a fan of that. And then for here, I have a link that I send people to a meet me page. So that's where I have all the details that, and you can find that in the show notes below. You can find the link that I relate to that, or you can just check out bcc.training.podcast.062.
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I like to number my podcast so I can find them and utilize them better in the future. So if you want to find out more, check out that. And then this coming week, so this Sunday we'll be releasing episode 63, Marketing When Your Life Gets In The Way. So I have a lot of clients, especially newer clients who are just trying to, like the reason they come to me is because obviously they want marketing strategy and they want personal branding,
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like do it for you services, that's what we do. And in those moments, there is a lot of, how do I say it? It's a very clear case that they are overwhelmed, not just with their brand and their business, but just life in general. And I work through a couple of tools and tricks, but also to be honest, tools that I use in my daily life to also help my clients. So in the event that if you're feeling stressed at all, make sure you check out that episode that releases this Sunday.
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And we have coming up on Vic Podcasters. Vic Podcasters is the Victorian Podcasters group that I run on Facebook, LinkedIn and email newsletter. And you can check out all those details. So if you are a podcaster or soon to be podcaster in the Victorian region of Australia, make sure you check out that group. We have a lot of people commenting, engaging, and really, really enjoying themselves and asking a lot of questions. We are revamping a couple of marketing things that we're doing. We're also doing the same marketing as in like outside the group, getting people in the group. And we're also taking some opportunities to highlight other talking points and how people feel about certain things. Because just because America likes it, doesn't mean we like it.
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Let's see how everyone feels about that.
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So last week we had episode 37, which was part two of our series about monetizing your podcast, where we discussed very much how to actually go about doing it. So now you know what it is and what it takes to get monetized. Here is actually how you do it. And then this week, this is part three of the monetization series, episode 38, being released this Sunday at 3 p.m. where we're going to discuss now that you know what it is and how to do it, how to maintain it, or how realistically, if say for example, you are not in a place where you can monetize, what are some benchmarks that you can reach to monetize your podcast? Because for a lot of people who come to me regarding podcasts, so at the moment I am a producer, as in the person who organizes stuff for at least eight different podcasts for various clients. And some of them are a lot easier because it's just them talking. Some of them are a little bit harder because there's guests involved, there's production schedules, and we're doing it in seasons, they're a bit busy. And when it comes to monetizing your podcast, yes, it can help, say for example, with the cost of running it, with the cost of producing it, but that also entails that you have to meet a minimum requirement of audience participation and audience engagement. And for some people who do not have an acting background, who do not have a public facing background of decades previous to starting a podcast, it can be a bit of a slog to get.
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I'm not talking from experience or anything.
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So do not worry if that is you, make sure you check out the VIC podcast as podcast, where in five minutes, we can answer all your questions about monetization and other podcast questions. So today we are going to be touching on community questions. As I say throughout every Video Confidence Connect, if you have any questions that you'd like us to touch on, I'm happy to go through that live. Usually what I like to do is pre-record a bunch of either Unboring Your Brand podcast episodes or answer questions that people have sent to me throughout the week, or in this case weeks, where I can answer a little bit more in depth so that I can just clip this bit out and send it to them, but then also use that opportunity to inform and educate others to make the process easier for them. So today we're gonna be touching on two questions that are from our conversation that I had with a prospective client,
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which we haven't gone through the next stage yet, we may never do so, but either way, here are your answers. So the questions were, what are some common mistakes people make when they're starting to build their personal brand and what can be avoided? And then the carry on question from that was, which personal brand pitfalls do you think are the easiest to fall into? So these are two podcast episodes we are going to record today. And like I said, if you have any questions, please do reach out, I want to make sure that I cover all my bases for you and answer all your questions about personal branding and video marketing strategies. So here on the screen is my website.
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Did I fix it?
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So apologies for that. These little, these little like diagonal things,
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I think I broke it.
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So I've been updating the website and doing a bunch of custom CSS and trying. So custom CSS is essentially the code that goes on the backend of a website to make certain things look certain ways. And I was doing a bunch of updates and I broke some of these and I'm like, oh no, how did, oh no, I broke the things.
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But so you don't need to know about that. But essentially this is my website. And of course I'm constantly updating this almost daily.
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And with the new resources and everything that we're pulling out, of course we will definitely have those updates for you. Like for example, I've definitely broken these. This is what it looks like. They should be crossed, but they're not, which looks cool, but it doesn't when they're looking like this. It's not broken. Of course you don't know that it's broken, but I know that it's broken, so I'm gonna fix it.
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Essentially what I've got is I'm building out my toolbox. So at the moment right now, we have a bunch of tools that I provide that are honestly scattered across YouTube videos, podcasts, and not everything is very, not everything is very accessible where it kind of needs to be. So what I am doing is I'm providing people this opportunity to have one page where it just says your personal branding toolkit and everything's gonna be down here. Right now I've got all the links to say the live stream that you're watching now.
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I've got the podcast and the VIC Podcasters resource.
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But what I will probably be doing is removing all that because everything is accessible either via podcasts, as you can probably imagine, or it's accessible via the resources here.
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And what I plan to do is provide these links to these areas all in the one place in this resource center. So this can include some paid things, but also some free things, and they will be denoted,
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they will be denoted on each of those platforms. So give me a couple of weeks. I will do my best to get this out there and looking nice and pretty for you. And I'm working my hardest.
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And here on screen, I have a bunch of my past clients. And I thank everyone for your patience. I have been working incredibly hard to get this up and running, and it's taken me a while. But essentially what I've done is I've been able to
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break down these larger concepts of work that I did with people to be able to streamline the work that we did and also make it quite clear for people who are interested in working with me. The challenges, what we did together, what the inevitable outcome was, a couple of quotes, just to see, not necessarily that I'm based purely on quotes, but I do enjoy seeing the emotion behind what people have achieved. Like, yes, you did, you created a podcast, or yes, you worked at a marketing strategy. But what did it actually mean for them? Did it make them feel relieved? Did it actually help them take action? Or was it a case of that it put their mind at ease because something that they had no idea about, they were able to breathe. For example, that could be something like that. And of course, this is a little bit indulgent, what has it taught me? What I will let you guys know is I will be fixing this screen that you see here. It's kind of not formatted for the screen that we have. I just initially tried to shove everything in there, but everything's not being very accessible or regible because there's all these things that are off the side of the screen. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna fix that probably by next stream. So you'll be able to see a much better rendition of everything that you can see. But for now, watch some ads and we'll go back to it.
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So as I was talking with this woman and we discussed,
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it's really, it's clearly causing you stress, it's clearly causing you overwhelm. And if you know your customer so well,
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and I say this with all sincerity, why do you need to be on those other platforms? What is the platform that they are going to be the most active on? Therefore you should be active on there too. For example, the people that I work with, I put a lot more of my effort into my LinkedIn presence.
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(Soft Music)
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You're a fresh little baby starting out on your personal branding journey. What are the mistakes? What are the pitfalls? What are the issues?
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It may even start some, it may even stop yourself from actually doing it.
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Well, I'm gonna tell you what they are. So you can keep them in mind and continue with your personal branding journey anyway.
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Welcome to Unboring Your Brand podcast with me, your host Zoe Wood, the video confidence coach.
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And like always our podcast episodes start with a question someone had asked me during a session or during a lead in conversation or discovery call. I would like to thank Tom for these questions.
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Or like essentially we had a conversation and they were starting out their personal branding journey. And of course, as I always like to say, everyone has a personal brand. It's whether a case that you take control of it or you're happy to let other people control the narrative. Personally, I'm a little bit of a control fake and I don't like the idea of letting anyone else have control of that narrative and reputation. Now of course, there is a bit of toing and froing in the sense of what they can say and what they can't say. But of course, when it comes to your personal brand, doing your best to control your own narrative is always a good idea I personally find. So a lot of the questions that they had were during this discovery call. And of course you can get your own discovery call at vcc.training, find out all the details in the description.
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Essentially, they had a lot of questions about common mistakes that people make when they start their personal brand and how can they be avoided. They seemed, and no offense to you Tom, I love you, but they seemed very, not paranoid is the right term, but just very much in the state of mind of, no, don't do that.
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Don't lock me. There you go. Don't wanna lose the background.
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And again, I don't wanna offend you Tom.
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You seem to be paranoid in the sense of what possible mistakes could be made and how to avoid them. And I guess I'm not saying this to be mean, I'm just saying that that is how the tone and essentially the direction of our conversation came to be. Now, of course, I'm not saying that you are wrong for being paranoid. It is okay. You are starting something new, especially for those of us who have not started businesses or those who have not taken on these larger than life projects, and again, these are all interpretations, but when taking control of your personal brand, especially for the first time, it can feel very daunting because there are so many unknowables. And a lot of people, and especially like myself who are in the personal branding space, have gotten quite used to not knowing everything and having the unknowables and honestly feeling okay about it. Now, of course, that may not be the same for you Tom or for anyone else who is starting their personal branding journey, but here are some of the mistakes that people usually make and how I like to remedy them. So I've got five for you today. We're gonna touch on trying to be for everyone, copying, pasting someone else's vibe, inconsistent posting or ghosting, talking only about yourself and overthinking everything. Now, of course, these might seem like really basic ones, but I'm gonna stress to you, these creep up in subtle ways, especially when you're starting your personal branding journey. So, let's go. Oh, and before I ask, I did have Tom ask a couple of times, Zoe, what do you mean by personal branding journey? Essentially what I mean is when you are starting the path of taking control of your personal brand, putting, for a lot of people, it's like putting a logo to it or putting colors to it, but for me, what I like to do with my clients is making sure that they break down who they're talking to, why are they talking to them in really clear language so they can use that for the rest of their marketing, which of course entails into our first point today. But when it comes to taking control of your personal brand, it's not just one thing. It's not just, hey, I got my logo, I got my colors, I got a basic breakdown sheet of two A4 pages worth of information about who I'm talking to and why I'm talking to them. Good, I'm done. I never have to touch this ever again and I never have to update anything ever again.
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That's why it's a journey. You have to keep doing it and keep reiterating it. And as you not just make content, I'm not talking just live streams, podcasts, articles, however you want to communicate with these people, I'm not talking just content. It also helps in the decisions that you end up making. For example, there's a lot of work that I have done early this year about essentially getting rid of a bunch of my products and services. Why? Because not necessarily that people were buying them because the people were buying them. It was a case of that I didn't want them to, I didn't want the services and the products to represent me. I didn't enjoy doing them. And also I felt like I could serve people better because I knew who I was talking to. So in those moments, I was able to make these very big business decisions because I've taken the time to develop my personal branding journey. Good, let's, all right, let's tie that tether up together and stop going on tangents. We are in an episode. Ah, so as we like to do. So first one I'd like to touch on is trying to be for everyone, especially when you are starting out, you can get the pitfalls or have the mentality. Now, of course, this is not necessarily for everyone, but a lot of people that I work with who are starting out on this branding exercise, feel like they have to be for everyone.
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That they are, they end up being, so the mistake is that they end up being super vague about like what they do, why they do it, and they're trying to, honestly, they're trying to appeal to everyone because the idea of like pushing people out or the idea of focusing in on the type of person that you want to work with, especially if they have not worked with anyone as of yet,
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can feel quite daunting. They feel like they're leaving money on the table. They feel like they're leaving energy and time. And if say, for example, they make a mistake and like the people that they're trying to target are people who are never gonna pay them what they're worth, and they feel like they've wasted a lot of money.
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That is okay, that is a reasonable stress to have.
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And when it comes to white flops, you end up saying a whole lot of nothing. And that is my concern when it comes to a lot of these energies and efforts that you take when personal branding or even business branding, because if you are super vague, you say nothing, and no one understands what you stand for, no one honestly cares what you stand for because you don't stand for anything.
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You're nothing, you're saying what?
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And the best way to fix that, the best way to fix that vagueness, but not necessarily just that to fix that mindset that you may have about needing to appeal to everyone because you're leaving money on the table. Now, of course, this could not just be money, this could be energy, resources, time. I want you to move that conk out of your head
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and think about getting clear on who you actually want to talk to, your ideal client, your audience,
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and even your past self. Because when you are starting this journey, you are not talking to yourself. You may be talking to a past version of yourself, but that is a different person. You are talking to an audience. This audience wants to connect, this audience wants to get their problem solved, this audience wants to inevitably give you money.
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So they need to know the reason why.
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And in turn, you need to have a really clear idea of who you're talking to because this helps you on business direction. This helps you on marketing. This helps you on many major decisions that you're trying to do with your business. You're not trying to copy someone else. You are trying to figure out how you're trying to serve these people. And if these people are way too big of a group, because in your head you're thinking,
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if I can only get like 1% or like half a percent of people on board, I can make this business work, I can make this brand work, I can sell the product I need to, or I can make commission, or again, whatever your goal is,
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in those times and moments, if you are unclear about who you're talking to, you are going to lose a lot of money, energy, time and resources real fast. Why?
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Because you are shooting blanks all over the scene.
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Let me correct that because that sounded a bit dirtier
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coming out of my mouth than it did in my head.
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You end up being like a shotgun that yes, you can hit the target with maybe one of those tiny little pellets that you're shooting,
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or you could spend that time
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getting a more direct aim and bigger bullet, and then when you hit, you actually make a bigger impact rather than just a slight flesh wound.
[00:30:51:29 - 00:30:56:08]
That sounded, again, that sounded a bit more violent, but hey, violent sells, sex doesn't.
[00:30:57:18 - 00:31:49:14]
And yes, I am very sexy. Thank you for asking. The second thing that I alluded to just before was copying, pasting someone else's vibe. So a big mistake that I see a lot of people, especially when they're doing it on their own or they're DIYing their personal branding journey, again, you are free to do whatever you like. I am happy to have a 15 minute complimentary free chat about just some next steps for you to take because I want people to spend their time and energy efficiently when it comes to personal branding and obviously video marketing ish mashtik as the video confidence coach. Personal branding is a very large chunk of that. And the mistake I see people making is that they mimic someone that they admire a little bit too closely. And when I say they mimic, I mean that they start not just talking like them, using their words, their mannerisms, and sometimes even their accent. I mean that they start trying to copy everything that they do.
[00:31:51:04 - 00:32:08:07]
But if you may notice that the people who are successful that you have come across are 10 years, 20 years, 30 years in the future from where you are right now. Even if you've been in business or in branding, or if you have been growing yourself for however long you've been alive,
[00:32:10:03 - 00:32:41:00]
people who are industry experts and leaders in their fields have worked their tukus off to get to that point. And it's not that you are not working your tukus off, you are definitely doing that. The issue is that they have usually, by that point in their career, they have a team. And if they don't say they have a team, they definitely have a team. They have a bunch of processes and resources and systems in place that they have tweaked and honed over many, many years.
[00:32:42:00 - 00:33:38:08]
You don't have that. And if you are someone who is starting out trying to build a personal brand, and you are trying to mimic someone larger than you, it is going to fail because you are gonna burn yourself out, your resources are gonna be spread too thin, and you're not gonna be able to keep up that consistently over time, but not to mention, you won't be able to keep the energy up. You won't be able to make the money that you're trying to do. And if you are copying someone else, people, especially the people that you are trying to attract, remember that from point one, they can smell how inauthentic you are from a mile away. As humans, we can recognize patterns and we can recognize when people are inauthentic or ungenuine. So in those moments, we go, thanks, and then block you. No, thanks, leave you again. Or tell the algorithm, hey, don't recommend this person again. Why? Because you're disingenuous.
[00:33:39:09 - 00:33:42:26]
So the way to fix that is, first of all, by,
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this sounds a bit guruish, but I wanna have you stick with me here, is being able to take inspiration, sure, see what other people have done over time, and maybe even research a bit as to what they were doing in the past as to where they were at your level. Now it could be a case of they had money, they had support, they had connections, they had worked in the industry that they're thriving in for over 30 years.
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I digress.
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But in, for you, to be able to both look in yourself and realize, okay, what is my own voice?
[00:34:23:12 - 00:34:39:22]
What are my values? And what is my personality that I'm willing to put out there? Because again, that's what a personal brand is. It's not necessarily a true reflection of you. Now, of course, you're not lying to people. Hey, I'm like this. I talk like this. I dress like this. I am who I am in my personal brand.
[00:34:42:07 - 00:35:19:24]
But my values come first. My audience comes first. And that is why I help them. And that is what controls my personal branding. So for you, instead of mimicking someone else, now of course, you can take some ideas and tweak. You can look at ways that they're tackling things and maybe even try and do that yourself, but in a streamlined, faster, easier, cheaper way. And if not, is that a case of something that they did 20 years ago? Is that gonna still work now? There's a high chance that it won't, but there's also a possibility that it will. You are allowed to research and pick parts of things that work off other people. Don't just take it wholesale.
[00:35:21:13 - 00:36:29:03]
And when it comes to that burnout, that inevitably comes from trying to be someone else and not having any clear direction as to who you exactly you're talking to, you inevitably come to number three, which is inconsistent posting or ghosting. Now, I'm not talking about social media. Like I'm not talking just about social media. I am a fan of an omnipresent approach. Like you can post multiple places at once with the same piece of content. Why? Because you do not own rented land. The platforms that you're putting the stuff on, yes, you can grow an audience and yes, you can get leads. Doesn't mean that they own your content and they don't own you because it's what usually most of the time they're not paying you. So in those moments, being able to understand when you are making this mistake or when you're about to make this mistake, which is essentially when every time you have a launch, something to sell or when you are really enthusiastic and you burst out onto your website, your social media, your email list, billboards, any other platforms that you have. And then you do that really heavily for a week and then you vanish for three months
[00:36:30:27 - 00:36:35:29]
with no warning, with nothing. And people don't even know if you're still in business anymore.
[00:36:37:04 - 00:36:39:13]
And the reason that it flops is because it looks like,
[00:36:40:25 - 00:36:52:12]
it looks like you're going on one day and they're never calling back again. You're trying to have a relationship with your audience. Again, your specific audience. You're trying to have a relationship with them. And if you never call them back,
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how will they know that you exist?
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And also they'll just remember, oh, I remember that guy.
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Where'd he go?
[00:37:02:25 - 00:37:03:19]
Oh, she seems nice.
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What happened to her?
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Oh, I remember them. I really liked what they had to say.
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I'm gonna forget about them again. And that's in the rare occurrence that they actually remember you. Because if you are not repeatedly appearing or being consistent with your marketing efforts, they're going to forget about you.
[00:37:27:19 - 00:37:43:05]
I experienced that a lot in my, not just when I'm working with clients, but also when I'm working with myself. Now, of course, there are times where things happen, where you don't post, or where you don't utilize repurpose content. It's gonna happen from time to time.
[00:37:44:10 - 00:37:49:26]
But making sure that you forgive yourself and get back on the horse is the best thing to do going forward.
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Being consistent is not just about letting it go. It's about taking that time
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to get back on board and try again.
[00:38:01:19 - 00:38:13:01]
So the best way to fix this issue of inconsistency or just burning out and ghosting your people completely is to pick a pace that you can actually stick to, even if it is just once a week.
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Usually anything more than once a week for say social media, I would not recommend. Mainly just because the algorithms move so fast. Once a week is probably a bare minimum. For email lists, probably at the moment, I'm experimenting with three times a week.
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Don't worry, it's okay.
[00:38:32:09 - 00:39:03:28]
It's not overwhelming. It's not overbearing. Trust me. But for yourself, it may be just once every two weeks. For website updates, maybe doing it once every two weeks to once a month. Just to make sure that you've got yourself covered in those moments where things, maybe life is getting a bit too much to you and make sure you check out my podcast all about handling your business brand as well as your personal life in the one life that you have. Make sure you check in that episode in the description below.
[00:39:05:23 - 00:39:34:22]
And it's also okay if that changes over time. I wanna stress now that I have a couple of clients who get very worried when things maybe aren't going on time or things aren't tracking along like they should. That is okay. We've got an archive full of content. And if you do not have a library full of content, start building one. You will find itself so useful in the future where you just get burnt out, schedule a bunch of posts, give yourself some breathing room, and there you go, well done superstar.
[00:39:35:27 - 00:39:57:27]
The fourth thing I wanna talk about and for a lot of people, this happens a lot. And Tom, not blaming you, but there was a little bit of this, was talking only about yourself. The mistake that people make, especially when starting a business, but also just in personal branding in general, is turning all your content into your personal journal.
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Is everything that you talk about is me, my experience.
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And the reason that it flops is because people care about more about themselves, of course, but people care about how you can help them, not your every thought. Now, of course, it's okay to have opinions. Opinions are good. And making sure you stick by those opinions is even better. And then if those opinions change, let people know, of course.
[00:40:24:15 - 00:40:39:24]
But the reason why it rubs people the wrong way is yes, you can mention, say for example, maybe you have a past experience that has helped you grow and you found a good method to deal with that issue or problem that the people that you work with face.
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Awesome. Bring up the fact that you have experienced that and then talk about them.
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Talk about how you can help them. Like say, for example, when it comes to examples, I make sure to bring in my clients. I don't mention them by name because of course, NDAs and not wanting to give away people's personal details. Now, except for you, Tom, let me use your name.
[00:41:00:05 - 00:41:04:05]
And I hope I haven't made you look too bad. I promise.
[00:41:05:19 - 00:41:21:20]
And with those mistakes, it is understandable when you feel like you're talking about yourself a bit too much. And it can kind of come with a gig because personal branding is your personal brand out there in the world. It can kind of come with a gig.
[00:41:22:29 - 00:42:00:19]
But the way to fix that is to frame your stories, your messages, your thoughts, so your audience learns something from your experience. Yes, you may be talking about your story, what happened to you, your experience, but easily and quite quickly framing that to how it is a learning lesson for them. How does an educational thing for them? How your solution helped you achieve your, the solution, you know, how your solution helped fix your problem and you can do the same for them. Or making sure that when you mentioned to people, hey, this is the problem that I experienced 10 years ago, things have changed, but the problem still remains. Here's how I want to fix it for you.
[00:42:01:20 - 00:42:19:00]
Awesome. You have pivoted them at the center. Everything you do, business decisions, messages, ideas, thoughts should have them at the center. If it has you at the center, you are doing it wrong. You are doing it for them. It may be your face, but it is their message.
[00:42:20:14 - 00:42:36:23]
And the last point I want to get into today, I love that these community questions that I have here are supposed to be short, little like teaser things. They never are. I always go into too many tangents. So I apologize if I have strung you along and you were bored out of your mind. I'm here for you.
[00:42:37:27 - 00:43:03:20]
The last one, the last mistake that people who start their personal branding journey tend to fall into. And this is something I honestly still struggle to this day is overthinking everything. The mistake that you find yourself is spending hours editing one reel, one carousel, one piece of content, or rewriting your bio, your 250 characters, or even less in some cases, about 15 times because you want to get it perfect.
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Burnout is real.
[00:43:08:20 - 00:43:13:07]
And burnout before you even started or put things into action or have it be public
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is an even worse fate.
[00:43:17:04 - 00:44:07:20]
And unfortunately that does happen with me. It's still a lot. So even though this is a beginner mistake, honestly, it still happens with me. And the way that I have fixed this in my own self, in my own knowledge and work is I have been, I have been thankful enough and grateful enough to be able to have a team around me who not just require deadlines, but require me to take action to, even if it is messy and not exactly fixed and not exactly perfect, I have to get it out now because it was due. It is due now, get it out. And even though it is not perfect, you can tweak it later. You can fix it later. Things change and evolve. The content from over, and the content from when you started is going to be different now. The way that you mark yourself is going to be different now because of things that you learn and you tweak through who you talk to.
[00:44:09:05 - 00:44:22:10]
It is going to take time, but that is okay. Being able to push over that perfectionism, because again, at the end of the day, that's just stopping your progress. It's a way of obfuscating, taking action. It's a way of avoiding any,
[00:44:23:15 - 00:44:28:25]
not necessarily backlash, but any sort of responsibility, because if you haven't done it, well, no harm, no foul.
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You can't grow, you can't do anything, but you're still safe in that moment.
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To push through that mindset, and even a mindset that I even have to continue to deal with to this day, is pushing through that perfection to achieve the progress that you need. Hitting publish, learning what you can, and tweaking as you go is much better than taking no action at all. Or in my case, and possibly in your case, Tom, as well, burning out, just thinking things before you even do things.
[00:45:00:06 - 00:45:07:01]
You may not have a graphic designer. Cool, camera exists, templates exist. Oh, I don't have a video in it, the script exists.
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Like there are tools that are made to be easier, exist. And in those events that you do not have a tool that is readily accessible to you,
[00:45:17:23 - 00:45:36:10]
then reach out to someone like myself, or someone maybe in your network, or who had struggled with the same issue that you have, or is currently struggling with the same issue you have. And working together can help you overcome that pressure that you've put on yourself, and allow you to get some progress done.
[00:45:38:00 - 00:45:49:22]
And I'm even at the moment of recording, and probably by the time this comes out, I've probably found someone, I'm looking for an accountability for the rest of this year.
[00:45:50:27 - 00:46:43:20]
And honestly, that's what my intention is to have someone who was outside of me, who was outside of my influence, who we regularly, we're going to check in once a week for half an hour, or maybe even like 20 minutes. And the idea is that we come to that meeting once a week to say, here is what I said I would do, here is what I've done, here's what I'm gonna do next week, cool. And the reason that this works, and I found this methodology works pretty well, is because there is someone outside of you who is expecting that action, expecting that progress. Very much like when we were in school, the teacher expects you to hand in your homework, the teacher expects your project to be done. And as an adult, unless there is monetary consequences, there's less of a chance you're gonna do stuff, especially when growing your personal brand. Because if they can't see it, then I'm fine.
[00:46:47:05 - 00:46:49:15]
You are not gonna get anywhere if you don't take action.
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So in those moments where you're overthinking, reach out to people who can help you take action or progress.
[00:46:58:21 - 00:47:16:15]
Even if it is just a family member or a friend or someone who maybe doesn't have a stake in that end result or product, but they can see how much stress you're under and they can see when you're able to achieve that action, that that stress lives up, they're gonna be happy to be that accountability buddy for you.
[00:47:18:09 - 00:47:27:15]
Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast and thank you to Tom for sticking around. Hopefully this hasn't embarrassed you too much. And if you are like Tom, make sure you check out
[00:47:28:25 - 00:47:54:25]
my website on vcc.training where I have a bunch of tools in the toolbox, but also I have plenty of paid and free resources for you to be able to start and grow, take action on your personal branding journey. I also have a 15 minute chat that you can chat with me for free, though you do have to jump through a couple of hoops just of course we don't want to have any bots or anyone taking too much of your time. I want to be able to serve you as we can.
[00:47:55:28 - 00:48:02:15]
So thank you everyone for your time and for me gas bagging this episode. And I look forward to you for the one episode.
[00:48:04:02 - 00:48:04:29]
I freeze there a bit.
[00:48:06:28 - 00:48:21:09]
Thank you for joining us and I look forward to seeing you next week. Or you seeing me, you hearing me. I don't have a tagline just yet to finish off this episode. Thank you. So it gives people an insight into the work that you do to if they should continue researching anymore.
[00:48:23:21 - 00:48:36:03]
Their studies have shown that people research decisions more. And if you, for example, get a recommendation from word of mouth, you say, yes, awesome. What is one of the first three things that you do?
[00:48:37:14 - 00:48:38:24]
Besides searching them up online.
[00:48:40:23 - 00:48:53:15]
Two, maybe looking at the reviews. Now these can be reviews on say Google reviews, Facebook reviews, you know, any of those particular platforms that have specific review recommendations on board depending on the industry, of course.
[00:49:09:06 - 00:49:15:00]
(Soft Music)
[00:49:18:13 - 00:49:19:15]
Oh yeah, oops.
[00:49:26:26 - 00:49:35:22]
Hey Zoe, what are the easiest pitfalls to fall into when it comes to building a personal brand and how do I avoid them? Asking for a friend.
[00:49:37:29 - 00:50:06:15]
Welcome to the Unboring Your Brand podcast with me, your host Zoe Wood, the video confidence coach. And thank you as always to people who reach out to me with these questions either via email or via comments, via DMs, any way you like to reach out to me, I do like a chance to answer these questions in detail in the podcast. Today we have a discovery chat I had with Tom. Hi Tom. And this is part of a larger conversation that we had about common mistakes when starting to build your personal brand.
[00:50:07:28 - 00:50:24:12]
Down low, sorry, too long didn't read. Essentially Tom is starting to build their personal brand. Of course they're not starting from nowhere. Your personal brand is ultimately your reputation. It's just you're taking control of it because it's your personal brand. And as Tom is trying to take a hold of this,
[00:50:25:24 - 00:50:51:16]
not necessarily change in their life, but they're starting to make decisions, not just for them, but who exactly they serve. In those moments, they had a lot of questions about mistakes or things that they can avoid to avoid any pitfalls or any mistakes that they can make before they've even done it. Now, of course, as any of our listeners or watchers who are business builders or anyone who has experienced these larger projects outside of themselves in the past,
[00:50:53:05 - 00:51:38:08]
there is going to be mistakes. You are going to come across mistakes that you make, other people make, people make previous to you. There is going to be mistakes. There's not everything that you can do to avoid them. But what I'm gonna do is I have a list of seven pitfalls that are very common when it comes to personal branding. And what are the easiest ways to avoid them? Now, of course, these are not be all and end all. These are fairly general because we're on the podcast today. But if you want to know more about your specific situation, make sure you check out or book in a pick my brain session at vcc.training, where we can have a bit more but in-depth conversation. Now, of course, it's gonna be very generalized today, but I'm gonna do my best to drop all my examples with a little bit of sass along the way because of course that's what I do.
[00:51:40:01 - 00:51:43:02]
So essentially what we're going to look at is
[00:51:45:04 - 00:52:31:04]
when building your personal brand, it's a long journey, as I say repeatedly when I say personal branding journey. It's also a little bit like dating. If you try too hard or if you try to push too hard, no one's gonna give you a second look because they see you're disingenuous and they see, or they just see that you're just really, really gunning for them and they're like, okay, I'm happy, I'm cool. And if you're aloof or if you ghost them for six months, no one's gonna remember you. So we're gonna talk about the easiest traps when it comes to falling about building a personal brand and how to set up systems and processes that you can use to avoid these pitfalls. Now, of course, everything as I'm discussing are going to happen over time.
[00:52:32:10 - 00:53:32:26]
And this is going to heavily relate to another podcast that I run from the same question of Tom, which are common mistakes that people have when building their personal brand and how can be avoided. Essentially, the reason I'm repeating this is because I honestly thought of more pitfalls that you can take. Sorry, a lot of pitfalls that you can make when building your personal brand. But I also wanted to just drill down a little more into what these pitfalls are in a more general life sense because I like to be very direct and very specific and detail-oriented, which is my problem when speaking on podcasts. Hello, everyone, come along, let's join the parade and see what the first pitfall is. So the first pitfall when building a personal brand or growing a personal brand is thinking of style over substance. What I mean by that is when it comes to your personal brand, especially when you're first starting out and you don't have a lot of experience, is you have a tendency of thinking that pretty pictures, cool quotes, a logo and some colors is your personal brand.
[00:53:35:07 - 00:53:54:22]
But there's no value behind it and it's not going to cut it. Now, of course, I'm not saying this to be mean. Those things are somewhat important, but they're also very basic level. They're kind of like step one. Like what colors do you like? These ones, do they work together? Kinda, let's make them work together. Okay, like have you got some nice pictures of you, have you got some head shots maybe,
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or if not maybe hire a photographer for an hour and maybe get a friend to dress up as one of your clients so then you can look like this is how you work.
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That's kind of like the baseline when it comes to that. But before you even do any of that, you need to have a really clear idea of who you're talking to.
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And when you give people, again, your people, not everyone, your people, and I get that into another pitfall in a sec, is giving your people something to learn, laugh at or share is great. It gets people on board, gets you the leads, gets you the interest. But if they get past that first gate and see you have no substance or value,
[00:54:44:13 - 00:54:54:16]
people are gonna be like, oh, why did I follow you? Oh yeah, because you had like a viral image or a cool image. Cool, I'm just gonna ignore you or I'm gonna forget about you.
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So if you are doing your best to try and bring in people, again, your people, which we'll get into the next pitfall for that one,
[00:55:04:03 - 00:55:08:14]
it's okay to have things look a little scruffy. It's okay to not have things look perfect
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as long as you are doing your best to educate, to entertain, and to share your knowledge because you are trying to lead people to the solution of whatever you are either selling or whatever is the solution to the problem that they have. Again, your people.
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You don't need to be cute.
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You need to be useful and cute.
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And as I was trying to say before, with the next pitfall is trying to please everyone.
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When you are trying to please everyone, you are going to be remembered by no one because you are going to be so vague that they are not going to care an itty bitty bit about you because they are not going to, A, remember who you are because you're just speaking so vaguely, two, it's not gonna give you a lot of substance behind your style of what you're trying to get people on board with. And if you do not have opinions on things, it's going to drastically overwhelm you and burn you out. You are not gonna be able to make marketing or business decisions at all because you don't know who you're talking to.
[00:56:16:03 - 00:56:20:23]
You end up being planned, beige, and honestly in the meh zone.
[00:56:21:27 - 00:57:52:22]
And you don't have to be for everyone because not everyone is for everyone. Not everyone cares about what you care about clearly and what you are building a personal brand around and how you're trying to serve the people. So when it comes to these, now of course I have my customer avatar cheat sheet which you can find in the description below and you can find out more details about that. The reason that I harp on a lot about customer avatars, customer avatars is essentially a made up person of people that you have worked with in the past or intend to work with. And this customer avatar has all the details about not just the demographic of, oh, they're between this age and this age or they work here. No, really detailed things of, so for example, my customer avatar is Melissa. Hi, Melissa out there. Melissa Thompson, she is a tech entrepreneur based in Melbourne or Sydney, mainly based in Sydney because that's where everyone is. And she is in her mid fifties. All her kids are older or like take care of themselves. Yes, she has to go do a couple of things for them but mainly a lot of her work is trying to grow her business while also being relevant in today's marketplace. She also wants to grow her personal brand. So she's got a lot of things juggling and those are the people that I work with. Now, of course, I won't stress. I'm not shunting anyone else who is not that exact fit. I'm not cursing everyone else. I was gonna do rude fingers. That's probably not a good idea to do on the camera though. I wasn't gonna curse everyone out who is not that exact fit.
[00:57:53:26 - 00:58:09:07]
It just helps me when it comes to my messaging, my marketing and the decisions that I make because that's the type of people I want to attract. I want to attract people who have an emotional center. If it's just about the money for them, cool. There are plenty of other people they can go to.
[00:58:10:09 - 00:58:20:08]
I am very emotionally driven. So it helps when I work with people who are passionate about what they do and who are emotionally driven because we can thin a judge. We can see each other. We can work together.
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I'm able to work with these people because I know who I'm talking to. I can pick my people and speak straight to them. So unlike a Bunnings sausage sizzle, you are not everyone's butt.
[00:58:35:02 - 00:59:03:22]
So in those moments, being able to not necessarily choose but have a direction of who you're speaking to. And if you don't have a direction, honestly think to yourself, who are the people that I've worked with and who do I like working with? And if you haven't worked with anyone yet, who would you like to work with? But be very specific about who these people are. And again, if you are a bit confused about how this can work or break down, make sure you check out my customer avatar sheet or cheat sheet located in the description.
[00:59:05:17 - 00:59:46:14]
The last thing that can definitely happen when you are speaking too vaguely or you don't know who you're talking to is that your messaging is wildly inconsistent. Not just in tone, but just in message and opinion. It's easy to cop off other people. It's easy to copy off other people's styles, especially people who are 10, 15, 20 years ahead of you. People who have teams, who are making millions of dollars, who have a very big leg up over you. Not just in time, but also they have spent this time honing in on those people who really care about what they do and they have an easier sell so that they can start generating money and da da da da da. Again, I'm going into the business side of things, Zoe. We're talking about marketing here.
[00:59:47:22 - 00:59:50:19]
So when it comes to your inconsistent message,
[00:59:52:18 - 01:00:20:08]
if you sound, and this goes across all of your platforms, and again, not just on social media, but on your website, if your website is very corporate, like very clear language, a lot of anecdotes, letters, like messages in letter form, acronyms. If you have a lot of acronyms on your website, but say, for example, your Instagram is very like, sounds like a DJ from the 2000s, and on LinkedIn, you end up sounding like a lawyer,
[01:00:21:18 - 01:00:30:14]
that does not compute, and yet you're all the same brand, and it's all coming from the same person, your personal brand. And if you are working with a team in those events,
[01:00:31:22 - 01:00:51:01]
you need things to be consistent and cohesive because people are going to research you if they are interested in your message and your opinion, and what you have to say, and also the solution you provide. They are going to research you. We are not on a day where people kind of go off word of mouth and go alone. Yes, word of mouth can get you started, but people are going to research you.
[01:00:52:12 - 01:01:09:28]
And say, for example, that may come across more with AI frameworks, which I'm looking forward to that, but when people research you, they are going to find your different places online, not just social media, but also your website, and any places that you are online, maybe where you put articles or forums or blog posts.
[01:01:12:06 - 01:01:23:12]
People are going to be confused, and they're going to bounce. They're going to be done. They're going to be like, this person clearly doesn't have their shit together, and they clearly are not the right, for me, I'm going to leave.
[01:01:24:26 - 01:01:32:19]
If you keep your tone, your offers, but also your vibe consistent across the board, people are going to trust you more.
[01:01:33:22 - 01:01:38:10]
They're not going to get the heebie jeebies. They're not going to get the ick, and they're going to go, this person is for me.
[01:01:40:11 - 01:01:42:08]
They're going to feel your,
[01:01:43:23 - 01:01:51:05]
and your playlist vibes, and have everything work and meld together, and they're going to trust you because everything sounds cohesive.
[01:01:54:10 - 01:01:56:13]
For those who are listening, I winked. It didn't work out well.
[01:01:57:27 - 01:02:26:22]
And the next pitfall that I want to get through is copying and pasting your vibes. So what I mean by this is seeing someone, as I mentioned before, who is 10, 20, 30 years ahead of you, maybe someone who's got a leg up because they had a lot of money, they had a lot of connections, or maybe they worked in the industry for a lot longer, made those connections and money, and then proceeded to become the influencer. They proceeded to grow their personal brand, or they've just been doing it for a very long time.
[01:02:28:13 - 01:02:40:04]
Or they've been rubbing shoulders with the right people at networking events. These people have developed their style and their platform, and if you go about copying them, you are going to sound like a knockoff,
[01:02:41:15 - 01:03:04:26]
and people will notice it because we are very good at picking up patterns as humans. And if you are unauthentic, people are going to clock that, they're going to distrust you, and they're going to immediately block you. Not just, well, not just the block button, but also just the ignore. Like, they're just going to ignore you. Every time you come up, they're just going to scroll past you. (Humming) Why should they care? Because you clearly don't. You want to be someone else.
[01:03:06:05 - 01:03:12:11]
Why should they care about what problem you solve, or the solution you have? Why should they give a crap? You clearly don't.
[01:03:13:19 - 01:03:15:22]
So in those times, you need to be authentic.
[01:03:17:00 - 01:03:21:02]
And when you're starting out with your personal brand, authenticity is your best selling point.
[01:03:22:17 - 01:03:33:28]
Even if it's a little weird, nerdish, goofy, geeky, that honestly is what sells, because people respect people. Not necessarily respect. People connect with people. Respect is earned.
[01:03:35:09 - 01:03:45:07]
And inspiration can be cute. You can get a couple of words in, or maybe you can get a couple of mannerisms, or maybe even a couple of ideas from other people that are way ahead of you.
[01:03:46:23 - 01:04:08:25]
But make sure you piece mail them and make them your own. Something that you can do consistently, and something that you feel good about doing. Because you're not a cover band. Nope, no, I don't wanna say, like cover bands are cool. I like, I would say a lot of my music are cover bands, but they also have their own music. They just do cover bands, songs, as well as their own music, if you get what I say.
[01:04:11:12 - 01:04:18:17]
Next thing I wanna talk about is hiding your face or your voice. So I understand that in this day of
[01:04:20:02 - 01:04:22:27]
AI and wonderful things going completely wrong,
[01:04:24:17 - 01:04:33:25]
when people don't have a sense of who you are and you're trying to build your personal brand and you're going by name recognition alone, there's no photos, no videos, and no hint of who you are,
[01:04:34:25 - 01:05:06:05]
people honestly don't connect with logos. People don't connect with colors. Now, of course, you and your mind can probably come across various creators or various people that you've come across where you don't actually know what they look like. You just know their humor, you know their mannerisms, you don't know what they sound like because they use an AI voice generator, or they have something that sparks your interest and keeps you coming back even though they don't have any identifying features. And that is okay, that works. Are you able to replicate that yourself confidently, quickly, now?
[01:05:07:26 - 01:05:29:05]
There's a high chance that you said no, and if you said yes, go ahead, feel free to use that and use that name recognition alone. Just make sure you use all the other pitfalls that I've mentioned today on that name recognition. But in those events, but in those high instance, that you obviously, well, yeah, in those high instances where you didn't say yes straight away to that question I posed,
[01:05:30:12 - 01:05:52:24]
people wanna connect with you, and especially when growing your personal brand, they need to trust that you are going to give them the solution they need. So if you are able to, and if you feel safe to, showing your face, sharing your voice, and giving them something real to connect to is going to be more preferential and is going to speed up your growth rather than fake-ness, fake-ness, AI fake-ness.
[01:05:55:01 - 01:05:58:25]
People want more you, unless I can, the template from 2018.
[01:06:00:25 - 01:06:25:28]
And it's also okay if you do not feel safe enough to do that. I'm currently working with someone who doesn't feel safe enough to provide any identifying features. That is okay. We can work around that. We can do that by the tone of voice that the articles that are being written. They are able to utilize their experience and have it in a comedic way that gets people on board because people really enjoy that.
[01:06:27:06 - 01:06:29:17]
Find what works for you, and again, the people that you serve.
[01:06:31:13 - 01:06:52:09]
And the last two pitfalls that I wanna talk about is overthinking everything, especially when you haven't started yet. Tom, I'm looking at you, but no offense to you. If you have started, or if you haven't even started your personal brand or even building your personal brand and you overthink everything, spending months perfecting your brand before even posting anything,
[01:06:53:09 - 01:06:54:24]
you will never be 100% ready.
[01:06:57:01 - 01:07:07:15]
You will never be ready. You will never take that action, and you will have wasted the energy, time, effort, and money you have put in so far and will in the future.
[01:07:09:26 - 01:07:12:10]
Just hit post, tweak and adjust later,
[01:07:13:26 - 01:07:24:01]
and the internet or wherever you put your message isn't made of glass. Things change, things evolve, and that is okay for your brand to do the same as well as you to do the same.
[01:07:25:15 - 01:07:26:25]
You can't steer a parked car.
[01:07:28:12 - 01:07:29:05]
You have to get moving.
[01:07:30:09 - 01:07:43:27]
So in those moments, I want you to overthink, and especially, this is something that I still continue to deal with now. So that's something who's talking to you about personal branding, and this is kind of my shtick when it comes to personal branding, and video marketing.
[01:07:46:16 - 01:07:53:00]
I know it can feel very overwhelming, but I'm gonna tell you now, half of that is just procrastination,
[01:07:54:13 - 01:08:06:07]
masquerading as I want things to be right for my client. I want things to be right for them. They wanna see you. They don't wanna just have you fall off the blip of the radar.
[01:08:07:16 - 01:08:15:05]
Even if it's not perfect, they want their help. They want their problem solved. So in turn, you need to be there, even if it's not perfect.
[01:08:16:27 - 01:08:18:19]
And the last pitfall about,
[01:08:19:29 - 01:08:27:17]
for those starting their personal branding journeys, is talking and making everything that you do all about you.
[01:08:29:10 - 01:08:57:03]
Your brand is not your online diary, and even though a personal brand is a reflection of you, it's also a public reflection of you that is built for a specific audience. You are there to solve their problem. Yes, it may be a case that you solved the problem because where they are now is where you were five years ago, 10 years ago, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. All the people that you help are, for example, maybe you don't have that lived experience.
[01:08:58:23 - 01:09:13:00]
You may not, what am I saying? I'm saying is that you may not have that exact lived experience that they're experiencing, but you're coming from a place of authority because you know what you're talking about and you want to help and serve these people. So in turn, you need to make them the focus.
[01:09:14:01 - 01:09:30:10]
You need to know what they want, what they need, and what they struggle with, and make sure you put that in your messaging. Say it out loud, even though you may not be the exact right fit and look for talking about, when I was going through menopause 10 years ago,
[01:09:31:27 - 01:09:37:11]
like that, that may like put people off if you're a very masculine looking person.
[01:09:39:11 - 01:09:46:01]
I'm not saying that to be transphobic. I'm just saying that if the message doesn't really correlate with what you're doing, what you're saying, and also what you're opinionated about,
[01:09:48:21 - 01:09:54:20]
it can seem very disingenuous and people are gonna lose trust in you because you're making it all about you.
[01:09:55:24 - 01:10:13:21]
Your stories, your messaging, and your marketing is not a mirror, it's a megaphone. It's meant to project your message out to the people that need to hear it so that they can change their lives and make things work for the better. You are not talking to hear yourself. It's a brand.
[01:10:15:15 - 01:10:15:28]
It's a rant.
[01:10:19:08 - 01:10:31:05]
Well, at least today's podcast episode was a rant. So thank you everyone for joining us today, wrapping up by points for Tom and for anyone who is listening and watching. Your personal brand is about connection, not perfection. You don't need to be everywhere.
[01:10:32:20 - 01:10:47:13]
You just need to be clear and consistent and do what you are capable of doing. You can always grow, you can always be in more places once you know what you're doing. And do your best to fall in love with how you show up as you, your wins, your warts, your whiz dances,
[01:10:48:22 - 01:10:51:18]
because you are stuck with this personal brand.
[01:10:53:00 - 01:11:02:28]
Yes, you can change things. Yes, you can evolve. Yes, you can adapt, but it's not just for you, is it? It's for your audience.
[01:11:04:28 - 01:11:09:04]
Thank you everyone for joining me for this podcast episode. Make sure you check out our,
[01:11:10:04 - 01:11:29:23]
everything that's in the show notes, anything that I have tickled your fancy with, make sure you check it out at vcc.training, where we've got all our products, our services, our tools to help you grow and start your personal brand and actually take action, as well as video marketing and other strategies as well. Look forward to hopefully chatting with you soon. (Clicking)
[01:11:31:27 - 01:12:23:28]
And I was talking to a fellow business owner, a new business owner this week, who launched a couple of months ago. And she saw that I did digital marketing, the podcasting and the live streaming. And we had a chat about social media and just how over it she already is, despite the fact that she launched her business a couple of months ago. And she divulged to me that she was kind of already on the way out when it came to social media in general. And I don't wanna bring you on a downer, if you are working on social media and it is working for you, like you have processes in place, you have the way of thinking about it, you have a consistent posting schedule, like you've got all these things in place, probably from years of trial and error. Congratulations, if it's working for you, awesome, great. Keep up the good work.
[01:12:25:13 - 01:13:30:01]
Sorry about you Arthur Zoe, but I wanted to thank everyone for your comments and your questions, your thoughts and your podcast, topic ideas throughout the live stream as we go live or in the hashtag replay. Thank you everyone for your comments. Make sure that if you're on the squad, hashtag replay squad for any of those who are watching or listening to us after the fact. If you have missed any part of this live stream and are confused when you came in and you don't know what's going on, make sure that you watch and listen the whole thing on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and many other platforms. Now of course you can also check out all the details. I always do a detailed write up of the live stream in the show notes. You can find that at vcc.training.video-confidence-connect. Ha! And next week we have a live stream 32, echo expert stand out online. And I'm gonna read this for you so I can have all these details here for you. Let's be real. No one becomes a thought leader by parenting like LinkedIn buzzwords or calling it, you know, and then calling it a day.
[01:13:31:16 - 01:13:50:06]
So on Friday, next Friday, so that is going to be the 13th, so June 13th. We're gonna be diving into the, what actually makes sense, making someone an expert in their field and it's not just a fancy job title or certificate that's collecting dust on a shelf or in my case on my walls.
[01:13:51:16 - 01:13:54:00]
So you actually have those certificates but they mean almost nothing.
[01:13:55:07 - 01:14:42:11]
Well, we'll also tackle the awkward tight rope between sounding professional and looking like you because there is a difference because if your online presence feels more like a robot than a real person, people are gonna scroll right past and even if you do know your stuff, people are gonna think you're AI. So in those moments, make sure you tune in with me next week to underangle the myth that you need to sound smart to be taken seriously and we'll cover how to show up confidently and speak with your own voice and be seen as the capable legend you are. Thank you everyone. Make sure to check out the website, vcc.training, smashing a marketing mayhem with killer video strategies. And I look forward to seeing you this time next week on the Video Confidence Connect. Thank you. (Upbeat Music)
The above livestream episode description and transcript were generated together human knowledge + ai.
Listen to the edited livestream in a podcast episode
Who is your host?
Feeling stuck trying to build a personal brand that actually turns heads? Women and non-binary super-stars deserve more than just a cookie-cutter approach to their worries. Zoë Wood the Video Confidence Coach untangles your marketing mayhem, helping you own the camera, craft killer video strategies, and connect with your audience like never before. You’ll leave with the tools to show up, stand out, and smash your goals.
Find out more about how to grow your personal brand with the power of video right here on vcc.training
Smashing Your Marketing Mayhem With Killer Video Strategies 🧡
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