#106 Q&A on Personal Branding

Do you have questions about Personal Branding? Andrea answers 13 personal branding questions from a live Q&A event hosted by the FishBowl app. Learn how to boost your confidence, 3 specific benefits of developing your Personal Brand, and more!

 

RESOURCES

FishBowl

 

Maye Samoiel

 

Talk About Talk #106 - Personal Branding Questions - FishBowl Live Ask an Executive Coach promotional image

 

Dr. Andrea Wojnicki & Talk About Talk 

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to talk about talk episode #106 – a Q&A on Personal Branding.  

My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki (please call me Andrea!). I’m the founder of Talk About Talk, and I’m your communication coach.

Are you an ambitious executive?  Do you have a growth mindset?  Are you looking to advance your career? Well, you’re in the right place. At Talk About Talk, we focus on communication skills topics like confidence, demonstrating leadership, and yes, personal branding. If you check out the TalkAboutTalk.com website, you’ll find tons to resources to help you, including the new online course on Personal Branding, as well as 1-on-1 coaching, the archive of this bi-weekly podcast, and the free weekly email newsletter. Please go sign up for that newsletter if you haven’t already .  You can think of it as free communication-skills coaching. You can find all this at talkabouttalk.com

OK - A few months ago we released the first Q&A episode focused on general communication skills – that was episode 102.  Given the overwhelmingly positive feedback we received, we decided to do this again, this time with the Q&A focused on Personal Branding.

These episodes are different from other TAT episodes. You're going to hear a Q&A that was recorded from the FishBowl App with over 850 fishbowl members listening live and firing Qs at me. Have you heard of Fishbowl? Fishbowl is a platform for professionals where they can have honest career conversations.  I encourage you to check it out. You'll find links to Fishbowl and lots of other Personal Branding resources in the shownotes for this episode and also on the Talkabouttalk.com website.

In THIS episode, you’re going to hear my unscripted answers to unscripted questions about everything from how to define a personal brand to why PB’g is important, to lots and lots of questions about improving your confidence, and even how to recover when you’ve made a mistake that might hurt your personal brand.

I counted a total of 13 questions.  So this is really like a masterclass on PBing. I hope you’re ready to learn lots. And if you like what you hear, I invite you to take the recently launched Personal Branding online course. It’s called “5 Steps to Nail Your PB.” In this self-paced intensive course, I will guide you step by step through the process of articulating your personal brand. I promise this course will help you introduce yourself with confidence. You can find out all about that course on the TAT website.

OK - Before we get into the Q&A, I two quick things you need to know. The first is that because of the Q&A format, you wont hear a summary at the end of this episode, because the answers to each of the Qs are relatively succinct.  Like I said, this Talk About Talk episode is different from most others. But like other episodes, you can always go to the shownotes for this episode on the TAT.com website and reference relevant links and the transcript there.  I even highlighted the 13 Qs for you to make it easy.

The second thing is I want to say a huge THANK YOU again to my friend Maye Samoiel, who invited me to participate in these Fishbowl live Q&As. Maye is a dedicated forensic accountant and consultant by day and in her spare time, she’s also a Community Leader on the Fishbowl app. So this was our 2nd Fishbowl Live Q&A together, and the audience was even bigger, with over 850 people in the audience, listening and firing Qs at us. At the beginning of this recording, you’ll hear Maye and me talking about despite her shyness, she also feels fired up after these live Q&As. Maye, you’re a star.  Thank you.

Alright let’s do this!

 

TRANSCRIPT

Well, I see that people are joining in. So well fellow fishbowl members and especially you Andrea wish Nikki Welcome. Welcome to our Ask an executive coach event. My name is Mei and I have the pleasure to host today's fishbowl live session. I'm a manager in a consulting firm, and a fishbowl leader. But most importantly, I'm very excited because today, we have Andrea with us. And she is here to talk about how to manage your personal brand, how to manage your personal brand. So, you might have heard of Andrea during our last session, if you don't know her yet, Andrea is a communication coach and a podcaster at talk about talk, a learning platform to help ambitious executives improve their communication skills. And for the second time since we started the ask an executive coach series, she's generous, generously donating an hour of her time to help each and every one of us understand how to manage our personal brand. So Andrea, I know you're you're you're just started your own bowl here and fishbowl. And really, before we jump into the subject, I wanted to just learn a bit more about you what you do, what led you to coaching and how how we can reach out to you.

Great, okay, thank you so much me for inviting me and inviting me back to my this is the second time I've done this. And I quickly agreed to do the second one because the first one was so much fun. I had such a fantastic time talking with many of you and answering your questions. So I'm really happy to be here. I love suggestions and questions from listeners. And Monday's episode is actually about the benefits of personal branding. And so I've been since I started talking talk about talk, I've been coaching ambitious executives so folks probably like you who are more than likely done your formal education but you realize I'm I'm a good B plus, and I'm ready to be an A plus. And I I'm gonna get that way by really focusing on some of my quote unquote, soft skills, my communication skills. And over the last couple of years, I've really come to learn that focusing on your personal brand can provide you with a lot of traction. So that's why when Mei and Rachel invited me to come back for this second fishbowl, they said, We should talk about a topic cuz the first one was general communication skills. And I said, Oh, it's got to be personal branding, because I know this will make an impact on people.

Love that. This is amazing. Andrea, I am personally a really big fan of yours. And I do listen to your podcasts. And I really recommend recommend them to everyone in here, I just find that you provide such insightful recommendations and just you know, the way you you present it is always so much fun, too. So we're very lucky to have you here with us today. Thank you.

So pleasure. Thank you.

Amazing. So yeah, so I see that a lot of people are joining in. I'm also extending a special opportunity for you if you have questions and don't wish to ask directly, you can message me privately, and I'll do my best to get your questions across to Andrea. So, let's jump right in. I, you know, I, my first question really is basic, but I think it's important. So Andrea, what is a personal brand?

So may, if you hadn't asked me that, I would have jumped in and said it anyway. So thank you for doing so. You know, I talk a lot and write a lot about personal branding. But I always start with defining it just to get us all on the same page, because it does mean different things to different people. And that's fair. So when when I'm coaching and thinking and writing about personal branding, I'm thinking about probably what you're you're also thinking about, which is your identity or your reputation, right? It just like with product branding, products have brands, and so too, will people. Okay. Jeff Bezos actually has this fantastic quote, that really helps us put this into perspective. He says, your brand, is what people say about you, when you're not in the room.

Wow, I love that.

Yeah. Yeah. So so we have, we all have a personal brand, whether we choose to strategically manage it or not. And when I say strategically manage, I don't mean manipulating people, I mean, thinking strategically about how you present yourself, right, and how you present your identity to other people, and reinforcing the parts that you want to reinforce. And I also want to clarify that we are talking when we say personal brand, it is professor, personal and professional, it is all of you, we are all multifaceted, complicated, human beings with many, many, many roles. And all of those together, create our personal brand. So we can get more into that in a minute. But that I think that's a good place to kind of start as a foundation.

Wow, I love that. And so why would someone want to work on their personal brand? Like, why would they want to invest time or effort in managing that if it's what people say when you're not there?

Okay, so it occurred to me actually, a couple months ago, that I've been coaching people who understand that strategically managing their personal brand is a good thing. And it's an important thing. And it occurred to me that a lot of people don't. And sometimes the the people that I was coaching, they're like, my boss doesn't really think this is important. And I was like, hang on a second, because I have witnessed, I've literally witnessed epiphanies and transformations of people, when they're managing their personal brand. And so I thought about it hard. And I have come up with three benefits of why this is worth our time and attention. The first is that when we take the time to develop our personal brand, we are controlling our own narrative. Right. And again, when I say controlling, I don't mean manipulating. I just mean, you're not letting other people say what you are, you're saying what you are. And I mean, a sort of extreme example of this is politicians who don't get out there and establish their personal brands, their opponents will do it for them. And I know that most of us don't work in that kind of brutal culture like politicians do. But the truth is, if we don't establish what our personal brand is, other people will do it for us. So that's the first benefit. The second benefit, I think is the most sort of exciting and satisfying one, which is, when you develop your personal brand, you will feel more confident than you have ever felt in your entire life. Because you will be articulating what your superpowers are, what your expertise is. And whenever you feel, you know, a little bit like you're getting impostor syndrome, where you feel a shot of adrenaline, you're nervous, you just remind yourself of your personal brand, what you are uniquely good at what your expertise and passion is. And then your confidence will be elevated so so the second one is that it boosts your confidence. And then the third one is actually forward looking. So this is this is an interesting one that if you take the time to develop your personal brand, you can become the go to person for whatever your expertise is, right? So you could be the thought leader you can be once if you have a really strong reputation, then think about it someone either within your organization or outside of your organization is looking for someone who has those traits, those values, that expertise, that passion, you're going to be top of mind because you have such a strong personal brand. So that's going to help you and your Future in the other thing is you, for you personally, in terms of the future, it helps you make decisions. So, for example, if I know that my superpower is relationship building, and I get an offer to work for a company where relationships are a key part of the job versus another offer, where I'm really just working one on one with another person, you know, which job do you need to take? Right? So, so establishing your personal brand helps you with decision making, too. So those are the three reasons one is control your narrative. Two is competence, and three is optimizing your future.

Wow. I mean, he you state them, like, they're really simple things. But it sounds like a lot to unravel. There's Yeah, controlling our own narrative, I think the what I hear, you know, like in between the lines is that basically, we all have a personal brand, whether we know whether or not because like we might be setting it up. So that that's what I'm hearing for the first one and then feel more confident. I mean, that's awesome. We've talked about imposter imposter syndrome, so many times on this, on this candidate channel that, I feel like that that's a great tool to go there. So I'm very happy to know, that's one of the benefits. And then forward looking Definitely. Thank you for sharing these benefits entry. Someone just contacted me with a question. And he says, Hello, thanks for the opportunity. I'm a New consulting analyst, and I'm struggling with confidence when presenting. What advice does the speaker have, to help me to improve my confidence?

Oh, gosh, I have I have many suggestions for helping with confidence and with presentation skills. In terms of your personal brand, one thing that I would encourage you to think about is, why it was that your employer hired you. Right? And you don't know everything, and especially if you're Junior, you know, you're learning, right? So but the reason that they hired you, if you ever feel like I call it the shot of adrenaline because I sometimes, you know, it used to happen to me a lot more than it does now. But I would feel like someone kicked me in the chest, and I feel this like shot of adrenaline right? And my, my hands get sweaty, my face turns red. And if you in that moment, remind yourself of why they hired you what why you versus somebody else that can help you elevate your, your confidence. And then the other thing I would say, particularly if you're well known, if not, particularly if you're more junior, honestly, at any point in your career, is to really ground yourself in a growth mindset. And I know that that's a bit of a cliche, but I talk about this with my clients all the time. And it seems to get a lot of resonance. So when I talk about a growth mindset, I'm defining it specifically as reminding yourself, I know what I know. And I'm keen to learn more. And I'm telling all the people here in this room, I'm just going to tell you right now, before I logged on to this q&a, I actually said that to myself, I know what I know. And I'm keen to learn more, I don't know what you guys are going to ask me, I may not have an answer for every question. But I know what I know. And I'm keen to learn more. And just thinking about that really consciously. I promise you, it's like it's like a superpower. The really interesting thing about having a growth mindset and reminding yourself of that definition is that sometimes later on in their career in particular, people sometimes err on becoming arrogant. If you're continually learning, you're not going to you're not going to become arrogant. Because arrogant people don't arrogant people are like closed off, right? They're closed, they're like, defensive. And so I really think that that adopting a growth mindset is like a superpower and continually reminding yourself to do that.

You know, Andrea, the first time I heard you say that, I kind of it kind of took me a moment to really, really understand it like the growth mindset and then once I was caught up in a you know, kind of a situation where you know, it was kind of a mistake and then I was starting to feel like guilty and bad and then I was like, No no, no may remember growth mindset. So you did the best you could in that situation and now you know more so You can do better. And that's when I just, you know, your presentation of growth mindset just hit me right there during that moment. So thank you so much for that advice.

Oh, I'm so glad you were able to internalize. Yeah. And, you know, by the way, that just reminded me, it's really, really hard to adopt new habits just from listening to a q&a. So to all of you who I can see your headshots, and I'm, I'm so thrilled that you're here. And I hope that you can take at least one nugget that is going to, you know, transform a habit or a mindset that you have. But if something in particular, you know, sounds intriguing to you that you think it might work. And I know different things work for different people. So that's why I'm suggesting this at the beginning, write it down. And what I have done this myself is put it on a post it note on your like on your laptop screen. And until it is in your brain. Like when I'm trying to memorize something I write like, here are the three things I need to know. Boom, boom, boom, and then once I have it memorized, I get rid of it. But it's just a bit of a hack for helping you internalize things.

Wow, amazing. Thank you. I have another question here coming in. And the person is asking, when you’ve made a mistake, what is the best way to recover and fix your personal brand? I feel like it's a little connected to what we just talked. And she's also asking, What are Andrea’s Thoughts on comparison? Is it good or bad?

Oh, these are fantastic questions. So excited. Okay. So the first part of the question is about if you made a mistake. So here's what we all need to know. And remember and remind ourselves of that, I hope is going to take some of the edge off of all this. And that is that our personal brands will constantly evolve, period. So that means if you made a mistake, and people witnessed it, and you're like, oh, gosh, now my reputation is going to be that I'm whatever not conscientious or that I don't care, whatever you think it is, you can change that. We, in fact, if your personal brand is not changing, it means you're dead, right? Like, the world is changing around us. Our relationships are changing, our jobs are changing, our customers are changing, our clients are changing, everything is evolving around us all the time. So if we aren't evolving, then we're dead. Like, you know, not literally, but metaphorically, we're, we're dead. So you can evolve your personal brand. And, and if you make a mistake, again, I remind you go back to the growth mindset, go back to the growth mindset and own up to it, I made some horrible mistakes in my career, I can tell you, I actually almost got fired when I was at Kraft because I ordered I accidentally ordered 12 times of something that I was whatever I ordered, like a pallet instead of a case of something. But anyway. So if you have a growth mindset, I'm telling you, it's like a superpower to get you out of anything. So that's that's the mistake. think the other part of the question I think was about, about copying others and emulating others with your personal brand. Is that Yeah, like is it a good thing or a bad thing to compare yourself?

So here's the thing. If you're going to spend your career, emulating others copying other people, you will be a very strong B plus, for sure. Maybe even an A minus. But if you want to be an A plus, think about the people who are really rocking it. They are in their happy place. They are unique and true and authentic to who they are. and unique is the name of the game. So I have the saying that I remind people, which is unique is better than better. Wow. Yeah.

I mean, being unique, what does it mean, Andrea?

So, so I've got so many stories, but you know, I can imagine, especially early on in the actually, that's not even I keep saying that I don't think it's true. I think this happens also at senior levels, you see, one of your peers get promoted. And you're like, why didn't I get promoted? Or why didn't that other person get promoted, and then you see how they act, and you say, I'm going to emulate that, I'm going to copy that so that I also get promoted, that will be that will get you so far, because you're probably copying the positive attributes, right? If you want to really succeed, really feel fulfilled, and like knock it out of the park, you need to also adopt the qualities that you know, are uniquely true to you. And so for example, I, you know, I was coaching some senior women at one of the big audit firms, and I was talking to them about, about different archetypes, archetypes that we can emulate. And, and one of them said, one of the archetypes is the Jester. And she put up her hand, and she said, You know, I have to tell you, I want to admit something to you all, I have a pretty good sense of humor. I'm known as the comedian in my family and a comedian at work. But I actually tried to hide it, because it's kind of not appropriate. And I said, Hang on, you just got promoted to chief of staff at your organization? And she said, Yeah, and I said, Does your boss know that you have a sense of humor? And she said, Of course he does. I said, so why are you hiding it? Why are you hiding it like, of course, you have to be professional, and you're not going to start cracking rude jokes. But you can be that irreverent person, that light hearted person. And I can imagine you being the CEO, who is also that lighthearted, positive, optimistic person. And she she told me that it was like the biggest epiphany of her career that she's ever had. And she said, Now I am embodying my, my true authentic self in a way that I never have before. And of course, there is a balance, right? If I'm going to be the comedian in the office, I have to be careful that I'm not seen as a jokester. But now that I know that my, this is my true self, I, I am so much more comfortable embodying my own my own personality and my own values. So I have all sorts of stories on

how well I can see how that boosts confidence, for sure to be able to be yourself in an authentic, authentic, respectful manner, of course, but I can definitely see how that completely boosts confidence, right. Great example. So I know that when I used to read some books about personal branding, they would say things like, the way you dress and the way you walk and the way you you shake hands. But now we're really living in an online environment. And so is there like a big difference between online or in personal in person branding?

So I think that's that question is important anyway, but especially been amplified. Right, since we've been working from home. And we're presenting ourselves on a screen, it's no more boardroom table, it's around the screen, right? And my answer is pretty simple. And the answer is no, there should not be a difference. You are who you are, ideally, whether you are, you know, at home on the weekend, or you are at work, or you are whatever hanging out with friends or with your family, you're always the same person. And that goes with through whichever media you're communicating yourself through, and your brand will be stronger if you're always that same person. And I don't know about you, but I've known people that have literally different personalities at work versus at home. And you can only get so far doing that. It's just not. It's not authentic. And I know that's another buzzword. But authenticity is a jargon word for reason. It's a very powerful thing. So if you can be authentic in all contexts. And the other interesting thing about your question, though, May is that it reminds me I've spent a lot of time kind of helping people articulate what their brand is kind of as step one, and then step two is okay, now we've articulated it, how do we communicate it? And I guess the analogy is, if you were an advertising if you were a brand manager, right and you You write a creative brief, you're like, This is what my brand represents. These are the values of the brand. This is the brand personality, and then you hand that brief off to an advertising agency. And they write, they write the commercial, or they write the ad. And then you figure out, Where are you going to communicate it? Are you going to put banner ads on? Are you going to do LinkedIn ads? Are you going to do Facebook ads, whatever. And it's online, and it's your packaging. It's everything, right? So we as humans are kind of the same way. And so I've spent a lot of time actually I have, I have a document where I've brainstormed everything that I could think of, and I'm adding to it every week about how we can communicate our brand, offline and online. And I also think about communicating our brand, implicitly, versus explicitly. So explicitly is like, when you introduce yourself, explicitly is what's on your resume. What's on your LinkedIn profile? I think introducing yourself is a really powerful way to reinforce your personal brand explicitly, right? And then implicitly, it's some of the things that you were talking about, it's how you dress, which shows up by the way, whether you're online or offline, right? It's the style that you write your emails in. It's what's in your background behind you. It's literally the photo that I'm looking at photos of all these people on my phone right now, that is literally creating a personal brand in my mind for each of you. Right. So it's what is your headshot look like? It's everything about you. So it's explicit and implicit as online and offline. Yeah, so I've got a master list going.

Wow, that's, that's really interesting. So explicitly, and then implicitly. And you talk a lot about tranx, your greatest strength, your passion. And so these are not necessarily implicit things right? Or, like, are they explicit things? How do you? How do you incorporate them in your branding?

I encourage people when they're developing their personal brand, to think about what your one main theme is? What's the thing that you are an expert in? So that your one main theme, is the thing that you are an expert and passionate about. And it's the thing that almost always comes up when you are introducing yourself. So when I'm introducing myself, particularly in a professional context, and honestly, sometimes even in a personal context, I would say something like, my name is Andrea, wash Nikki, and my obsession, My expertise is communication. So think about what how you might say something similar like that. So that's kind of your main theme. And then this, this answers your question, may I encourage people to keep a list and yes, it will always change depending on what your job is. And you know, what your what your hobbies are, and everything, but keep a list of 12 to 15 key words, or phrases that prompt you to remember kind of what the main things are about you. And these things can be values, traits, like personality traits, values, things that you think are important. They can be the school that you went to, they can be the credentials that you've acquired. They're very often usually including the company that you work for, right? So talk about talk is definitely part of my personal brand, being a Communication Coach. So your role is definitely part of your personal brand. Some of you may be keeping a list here. So you've got your, your values, your traits, your education, your employer, your role, or your title. It also includes your hobbies, your affiliations, like what clubs are you part of. It includes your family roles, it includes what gets you up in the morning, it includes like, do you meditate, it includes what sports you play, it's all parts of your of your identity, all of the things that are positive, unique and relevant to you. And then what I tell people is, you would never introduce yourself by reading these 15 things, these 12 to 15 things, you would filter which ones of these things you want to share with people, depending on the context, right. So if I'm meeting a new neighbor, for the first time, I'm not going to say I'm a podcast or a talk about talk, I'm probably going to talk about my kids right, or how long I've lived in the house and maybe where I grew up, so that those things are part of my personal brand. So if you can identify what your key theme is, and then 12 to 15 key words or phrases that are positive, unique and relevant to you across all of those dimensions. You're golden.

Sounds good. So let's say we do that we work on our personal brand. We work on the explicit items, the implicit, we look at your pure module so positive, unique, relevant. And so how do we know with certainty that our personal brand that we worked on and we were trying to manage reflects what we wanted to reflect?

Well, so I think that just keeping in the back of your mind, two things, one is the fact that it will constantly evolve. And secondly, does it pass the test of positive, unique and relevant, that's really it. Like if you have an experience For example, where you think something is positive, unique and relevant, but then you go and you find out, everybody else is saying the same thing. So it's not unique. Or maybe someone's not perceiving it as positive, right? I think it always goes back to these three criteria. And as I said, keeping in the back of your mind, the fact that your personal brand is constantly evolving, helps immensely. Recently, I've been creating an online course, that I'm, it's not, it's not released yet. But I'm creating an online course. And as I was creating it, I was updating my own personal brand, right? Like, I was like, Oh, I could take this one and this one and combine them into one key word, because it's actually the same thing. I never thought of that before. And then I was like, oh, gosh, and then I thought, No, it's okay. My personal brands evolve. So it takes the pressure off to remind yourself of that.

Interesting. And so, I mean, you know, going back to the example you gave, that person was probably at a level where she got feedback about her personal about her communications and her personal brand. But what if you don't have what you don't reach that level, where people actually provide you that feedback? How can you test the waters? Besides from, you know, the PUR model? Is there any other way to just find out, what are people saying when I'm not in the room.

So one thing that you can do that I've done, that I found quite illuminating, and I encourage my clients to do also is email, I always say at least five people. And some of my, some of my clients have enjoyed this so much that they ended up emailing like 25 people. And I say, that's fine. But you just have to make sure you thank all of them. And ask them, What do you think makes me unique? And and you can ask them some other questions, right? But you're basically at and you can say, I'm working on my personal brand. Or you can say I'm just working on a on a self improvement project. And I have a question for you. What do you think makes me unique? If you can ask, you can ask it in different ways, right? So you can say, what makes May May? Or what makes Andrea Andrea, if someone asked you what makes Andrea, Andrea? How would you answer that? So I do these exercises myself. And 95% of what you get back will be things you already know. And it's lovely, by the way to read all these compliments from people. And there's probably going to be a few things in there that you're like, Oh, yeah. So one of my friends who I've known for years and years, and she's a friend and a neighbor, she said Andrea has extremely, extremely high standards for herself and others. And I was like, oof, so maybe she thinks I'm a bit of a tough mom on my kids, or I don't know what I don't know what she's saying with that. But then I realized, I'm definitely conscientious. And I need to add that to my personal brand, that some of the words that you include in your personal brand are going to be things that you aren't really saying necessarily in job interviews or, or to manager, they're more implicit. So another thing that I heard over and over again, and I hear this, after I do workshops, and coaching people always say, Andrew, you have so much enthusiasm and energy for this, like you are like off the charts. And so I have that as part of my personal brand. But I don't introduce myself and say Hi, I'm Andrea. And I'm super enthusiastic, because that's our or I have so much energy. That just sounds stupid. So I'm communicating that implicitly, right. So some of the feedback that you would get if you asked other people are going to be things that you wouldn't necessarily say about yourself, but you can demonstrate it and you can remind yourself that it's an important positive thing that you want to reinforce implicitly. So you can ask other people may but you can also just spend some time brainstorming like what is positive, unique and relevant about me.

Right. So I mean, I'm definitely going to ask other people brainstorming is going to take me a bit of time. I'll get there. I'll get there. So I see that dimia has raised his hand. I'm going to invite you as a speaker. And you're gonna have to accept to appear. Up here. Perfect. Yay. Hi, do you have a question for us?. Perfect. Hi, Ophelia.

Hello. Hi, Ophelia.

Hi. Um, well, first of all, thank you so much for just posting this, this has been so incredibly helpful. And just great information. Um, my question is, what are some ways in which someone can build confidence? What are some exercises that would be helpful and building that?

Ophelia that this is probably not probably, this is the number one most common question that I get. So my answer to start is that is that it? If it helps you to know that close to 100% of the population of this planet, has confidence issues? So it kind of makes you go? Okay, right. I can also tell you, the number one most downloaded episode, I don't know what number I can remember what number it is, but it's it's called mentally preparing to communicate with confidence. So obviously, people are they listened to it. And then they were like, sharing it with their friends and stuff. So it is a really common question. And it's really, really important because it affects how we feel and also how other people perceive us. Right? Like, if you're not confident, you're probably not credible. So I have so many of so many tips and mindsets and tactics that I could share. Let me let me just think so if you want to get a summary, you can try listening to the podcast on its on talking about talk. But one thing that I've been talking about a lot lately that I think is really powerful is using the power of self talk. So creating a mantra for yourself that you can use in any situation and mine mine changes over time lately. I'm just like, Andrea, you got this, if I ever feel a shot of adrenaline, I just go deep, slow inhale. Andrea, you got this. And then that always makes me grin because it sounds a bit cheeky and, and talking to yourself like that. Research shows. So this is this is the part of the this. That's the reason that I've been speaking with with so many of my clients about this lately. There's this research that shows that if you talk to yourself in your head, the same way that you would talk to a friend that was in having the same challenges. Research shows that your self talk will be very powerful. So imagine Ophelia that you were watching Ophelia, feeling a lack of confidence after you've worked hard on a presentation and you're about to walk on stage or in front of a room to give, you know, a presentation in a meeting. And what would you tell Ophelia, you'd say Ophelia, you're smart Ophelia, you're prepared. You know, you got this, right. And so that's exactly the way we should talk to ourselves, we should use our own name and use second person. So you This is really taking the power of a mantra to the next level. So that's what I've been talking about mantras. And if you listen to that, did that podcast episode I talked about mantras meant there is research that mantras are powerful. Now there's even more research showing, if you talk to yourself, like your own best friend looking at you. So you say, May you are so smart, and you're so prepared and you've worked so hard for this, you know, you're going to nail it, just like a friend would say to you then then you will. So that's one insight. Another thing that helps me is to focus on my superpowers or my personal brand. So I know I sound like a broken record. 

He's really helpful. Thank you. 

thank you for the question. Ophelia.

Yeah, sounds great. Oh, I see someone here that I'm just going to invite my jewelry yamdrok. Can you all hear me? Yes. Hi.

Thank you, for all the nuggets of you know, knowledge there, I've been listening through and enjoying thoroughly. I guess my question is a slightly catered differently, not towards communication, but ended up probably would love your, you know, bullets there. At what point in your career, at what level in the corporate hierarchy, would you recommend someone should absolutely have a career coach or kind of a paid mentor, who can help shape their career? I've always kind of played with the idea. But then, you know, we all find mentors through our professional lives. And I've just lived with that. But I've always taught to At what point does it become absolutely must to pay up, you know, career coach to kind of help shape and cater specifically towards your own career?

That's, that's a great question, Mary. So I was actually talking to my husband about this last night. And I said, when I got into this business, I honestly thought I was going to be giving speeches and doing workshops and doing my podcast and my, my coaching part of my business has really exploded, and I said, it's almost like therapy, like, you know, 20 years ago, if you had a therapy, or maybe not 20 years ago, but 30 years ago, if you had a therapist, it was because you were like cuckoo, like, let's just be clear. But now everyone's got a therapist. And I said, I feel like the same thing is happening with coaches, like everybody and my, my, my clients, but my friends, and even even my kids, friends like Pete, like everybody's doing this, when they get a new job, they're actually negotiating as part of their not their compensation, I guess it is sort of compensation. But as part of their job package, they're negotiating that they get a coach, like it's becoming totally normalized. So, so just a couple things. If you are really keen on getting a coach, I would say there is a way of asking for one, that there's really no downside. Because you are implicitly at least if not explicitly, communicating to your employer, that you want to improve and grow. And you're you're basically communicating your ambition. Right. So I actually have I have a lot of people contact me, and they assume that they will pay for the coaching. And I say to them, hang on a second before you think that you have to eat this, like, you need to talk to your your HR department and or your manager and almost 100% of the people that I've encouraged to do that their boss says, yes. Or their HR department says yes. And then they realize like, Oh, I've just communicated to them that I want to get promoted. I'm like, yeah, yeah, have and they're impressed. And they're watching you now. Right. So. But it answered to your question also, more specifically, the more senior you become, the more important it probably is, because you may have fewer and fewer peers or people that can mentor you, because you're becoming like you're becoming the mentor. Right. So who's gonna mentor you?

Right? Right. Okay. 

So yeah, good luck. Good luck. I'm sensing that you're gonna go ask for it.

Or I might just pay out of pocket, but I'm definitely gonna investigate into it. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. But definitely, you know, I think a coach is having a coach is amazing. And just as an anecdote, we've had Andrea, coach here, within my firm at PwC, for you know, like a series of coaching on communication. So definitely, I think that the companies can only win from from having their employees communicate better. Hi, Michael. Hi, can you hear me?

Hi, Michael. Claire.

Any advice to somebody who's trying to start a podcast?

Oh, you're trying to start a podcast?

Yeah. Just recruiting, coaching as well. So, so just just in general, just any advice and just getting started in, you know, coming up with ideas to start is to subject matter how to brand, things like that.

So I would say the most important thing when you're starting a podcast is actually just defining your target market as narrowly narrowly as you can. So when I started my podcast, 98 episodes ago, I was like, everybody's interested in communication. I'm gonna sort of target it to executives, but whatever. And now I'm like, No, it I realized over time, the more specifically I was talking to people like that are on this platform like on fishbowl, right? You are all ambitious executives. That's why I'm here. You guys are my target market. I realized over time that the more specific you can be the better and to be honest, I think this is related. Everybody who's here for personal branding is actually related to personal branding. So it's like, what is unique about you? Because there there are over a million podcasts, podcasts out there, right? Why would you choose one because it is uniquely interesting to you in the same way that as a human like think about all the people I'm scrolling through the beautiful headshots here, all the people that could be hired to do all of the jobs that all of you do, and it's something unique that you're bringing to the table to work every day. That's the reason why you got your job and, and so, I cannot emphasize enough as a marketer as a communication coach and as a podcaster. The significance of being really focused and unique.

Awesome, thank you. 

Thank you.

 

THANKS for LISTENING.  Talk soon!

 

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