Personal Branding and Networking
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[00:00:00]
Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Future Proof Views podcast. Go F yourself. It's a podcast about all things career and future proofing yourself Today's topic, we're going to talk about personal branding and some intro to networking.
Dan, what are some common misconceptions that you feel people have towards personal brand and networking?
I think right off the bat it's it's a little bit too much. Technology driven in some ways you know, LinkedIn, the default for LinkedIn on your headline, right? Which really the first impression that people get of you, right? The default for LinkedIn's headline is at company name.
And obviously you are not. VP at XYZ firm, right? You are much more than that. And so that's, I think one of the things that, you know, that you can, uh, do very quickly on your LinkedIn profile, it takes just a couple [00:01:00] of seconds to express who you are. And it doesn't have to be a long sentence because the space that you have for your headline is actually pretty short, right?
And maybe a couple lines, right? Maybe it could just be some keywords. It doesn't have to be all encompassing, but it can give you give your audience, really. And give you the opportunity to express yourself. Just a little personality to come on out.
Now when you think about personal brand, because maybe a lot of our listeners are, who knows, but maybe they're not as familiar with the concept or, or really have thought about it that much, what's the first thing that comes to mind you, Dan, when you think, all right, here's what personal brand means to me.
The personal brand is a little bit of the value that you can bring. Right? And maybe it's a skill set. Maybe it's maybe it's, the personality. Maybe it's the things that you're interested in, right? If maybe you're really passionate about music. Maybe [00:02:00] you're really interested in film production.
Right? Whatever it is. It can be your passions, it can be, where you want to go. And I, I know that Aaron has some thoughts on that as well.
Yeah, can I answer the same question,
Of course. Oh, you have a
the listeners can't see, but I think of merch. And maybe it's because I work with young people, but that doesn't mean you have to carry your own merch around and give it out to people like I do. But it's If you had a saying, or you had a perspective, or you had a skill set that you'd put on a shirt or a sticker, what would your thing be? What's your shtick? And it can become kind of a self fulfilling prophecy where once you get known as the blank guy or the blank lady, people will even bring you stuff, and I think of it like a brand ranchers have on their cattle. What's the whole purpose of it? I found this cow in my field, and I know it belongs to you, so I'm going to call you up or bring it back. And for you, that might be, Oh, you're the, [00:03:00] FinTech sales guy. I sent you an article because that's your thing, or I want to tag you in
Do you feel seen, Dan?
and
uh, thanks.
but it happens organically. I doing part of our future proof, your career exercise, where you do the 360 ask people around you, what am I
good at? That's a good way to start conceptualizing your personal brand. And I. Reached out to somebody and they told me I was the blank expert and I never thought of myself that way. And they're like, yeah, anytime I have a question on this thing, I just come to you or go find your content. And, that's, that becomes your brand.
So it's, instead of bringing you the cow that got out, they'll bring you the job, they'll bring you the connection, they'll bring you the podcast, and If you have a brand, people can bring you that stuff. If you don't have a brand, who are you going to call if the cow that's in your pasture has no brand?
Yeah.
belongs
I, I love how you [00:04:00] express that, Aaron, and it's it's not where you've been, in some respects.
Yeah.
and I think the biggest misconception for me with personal branding is, especially on LinkedIn, it's a, an archive of what you've done. It's a looking back document and documentation of the jobs I've had, the skills I have built all past tense and what you have taught Dan and information's free, but the wise people listening to this will go do it is start to speak to where you want to go and have it be a future oriented way to build up your skillset, your reputation, your network, that it's not just based on your career.
You can't give yourself the job you want, but you can write an article about here's what I would do if I was in charge of digital marketing for this firm and put your comments on an article. People see that and go, wow, you know what you're talking about? I'm going to reach out to you and I need help on that.
And you can speak that into existence.
Well, it's the [00:05:00] same. It's the same thing we talked about the other day with the course, with LinkedIn, especially, I mean, we're talking about personal brand across. Wherever you're found, but when it comes to LinkedIn, that's where you can actually exhibit social proof, right? And so if you're writing content that's more targeted towards the forward thinking aspects of what you'd like to do, then you're pivoting more and more.
I mean, you're a prime example, Aaron, because you're someone who writes a ton about AI. And now, granted, you use it in your job now, but what you can do with it Down the road or what you're trying to do is show your expertise in the space more broadly, not necessarily just when it comes to AI in the classroom.
Although that's a really, as we used to call it, that's a big claw for you versus the little claw on the crab, you know, although you're growing a little crawl that's more like AI for legal,
pretty soon it'll match the same size as in class. I personally feel [00:06:00] like that when it comes to personal brand, a lot of times people forget that there's the brand you're trying to create, but you already have an emergent personnel brand, right? It's however people see you. So it doesn't matter what job I've ever been in. I'm always like the de facto tech support. Always. Doesn't matter. It's always, John, what's going on with this? I don't want to necessarily be known as
I did it this morning! I did it this morning!
it's,
if we needed to recover recordings from a lost podcast, would we in fact ask John to help us with that?
and literally, I've managed teams where they were young millennials and almost Gen Z, and they still need me to help. I'm like, I'm the old millennial. You're supposed to know things I don't know. It's not supposed to be the other way around but it's crazy. And then the other thing I think is, it's Your personal brand's always on, right?
It ties to that. It's never, it doesn't really stop at any point in time. It's the collection of [00:07:00] things that represent you as a human being and depending on your audience and where you're advocating for that, you might have a different brand with some people versus others. You have to be mindful of the way that you interact with people.
I don't necessarily have merch, the closest thing I have. I still believe in business cards. It sounds old school, but because no one else brings business cards. You know that stands out and then mine are square shapes with a cute little logo cute a nice little logo on it For people to say, oh, I like that and it just stands out and anything that stands out It goes out this person, you know, they're quirky but professional And that's the tone of voice.
I always try to have with my content is like professional but Not taking life too seriously because that's how I am as a recruiter and I will make fun of myself to candidates day in and day out. And I think that makes me more approachable as a person.
Yeah, and I think it's more authentic, right? And
And that's what people look
the authenticity, has to come out, and you can only have authenticity [00:08:00] with with a consistent, Right. Consistent over time, personal brand that delivers, whatever you're delivering, but it's consistent delivery over time. And that takes EQ.
That takes emotional intelligence. There's so many things that come out of that, that are actually skills building right for the long haul. Because if you're only going to do the job, and, you know, being really mathy about something great. Yeah. Okay. Maybe you can deliver. But subliminally the.
The brand that you're building is, Oh, he's just really Matthew. Yeah. He does good work, I don't know. I don't know what they're all about. Right. And by the way one other thing Aaron, you've got the merch in John, you've got the business card. Oh, look at that. F you.
Oh, he's got
the stickers. too. Oh,
for all the young people, business cards are a thing of
the past. Get yourself a dot card, stick it in your phone case, and brand yourself on your dot profile because no one will
There you go, [00:09:00] dot card.
business card away when they leave the conference.
and so the dot card is great. I also have uh, Linktree. Right? So Linktree is a little bit older. Older school. All of my all of my kind of taglines, or, the slash, it's D A N O U. Right? So D A N O Y U across the box. Almost all social platforms, even some of the newer ones, right?
So threads or blue sky, it's at Dan OU. And that personal brand has been important to me. If somebody wants to find me,
Another key one of yours, Dan, is EQ over IQ. You tag almost anything, you tag, you hashtag that constantly because it's just one of the things that you focus on. And again, that, that continues to build up your social proof about how you think about the work world and how people build their skill set.
And I think there's also the flip side to the social proof, right? So it's as much of it as, as you push out your content or [00:10:00] you're delivering, whatever you're doing. I think it's also important to have an audience that's engaged,
right? So the comments, the likes, the shares. On your posts are one aspect of that.
I think another really powerful thing is the recommendations, right? LinkedIn recommendations I think are super powerful way and to build up your LinkedIn recommendations. One of the things that I've been coaching people to do is give one. Without expecting one back. And so you just give, give, give.
And then if you give out 50 of them, maybe you get 15 back, which is great. Right. If you have 15 LinkedIn recommendations, I think that's a really powerful social proof, you know, especially when somebody says something like I really enjoyed working with them. They were really great at delivering and they really did a kick ass job.
Yeah.
Give [00:11:00] recommendations and you'll get them, you'll get them back.
Yeah.
them, give them to people that if they gave you one, you'd want it.
That's true.
But luckily you get to review
it before you
true. That's true. And it's super easy to do on LinkedIn. We recommend, uh, doing that for for all of our listeners.
And I want to share a social media strategy with personal branding. I might be a little over the top, but My big thing in 2024 was, if you have a unique name, like John and I do, you should own your name. com domain. If you're one of hundreds of DanUs, you might have to add
a different top level domain, like
me or
Yeah. I have,
danou.
have danou. com. So there you go.
This is my social proof for people how much I believe in the power of personal branding. My kids, who are currently 10, 7, and 2, their birthday presents, amongst other things, for me in 2024 was I bought their name. com domain. I bought it for my wife, my parents, my [00:12:00] siblings, my sibling spouse, and my nieces that were like 3 and 5 at the time. And I pay 10 bucks a year to hold those because even if you don't use it, this also applies to social media handles. You may not be on TikTok. You should go grab. the closest thing to your name that you can across platforms or however you're branding yourself. Even when something new comes out like Blue Sky, I was on there grabbing my name.
Day one.
You, it's like real estate, if you own it, no one else can build on it. You don't have to build a website yet, although you should, you don't have to have TikTok, but at least you can keep someone else from having yours. Because part of personal branding is being, uh, protective and building a wall around what you want yours to be and not letting other people take your name or your handle or your identity online.
Yeah. At the very least you can redirect it to your LinkedIn or a link tree or your doc card or. Something.
Yeah. And there, [00:13:00] there's, uh, Aaron, you bring up a great point. There's something to be said about having that secure, personal brand. I mean, there's a little bit of security involved there too. Because ultimately if you control the channels, and where you think your audience wants to be.
I think that's I think that's an important aspect. I've seen how you personally, Aaron, your use of the TikTok channel has exploded, right. Millions and millions of likes and follows and shares, I think it's, it's so powerful what you've done there and now that you've translated that to become one, one of the, the leading influencers on LinkedIn.
I think it's terrific. The analytics are there, right? The the content you produce on LinkedIn is just terrific and it's incredible at what you've been able to do in such a short time.
Yeah.
and for the listeners out there, if you don't follow Future Proof You, Y O U on LinkedIn, we have a page that [00:14:00] documents this stuff. You can check out our live classes that we teach and our pre recorded ones that you can download after the fact. Including in February of 2025, where we're going to be teaching about the job search masterclass, setting up a LinkedIn quick start guide just to get going personal branding and networking. My specialty and Dan, your specialty on LinkedIn is networking at scale. That's really what content is. It's not I'm an influencer and I get affiliate deals, although you'll get offered those. It's more, how do I get people to come to me to network instead of having to go to a conference and use my. Dot card. Cause it's 2025.
You are, and I think everybody should approach it that way. And hopefully we'll have our own conferences for future review. Yeah. Sooner sooner than rather than later.
Yeah. One, one would hope, uh, by the way, for those who don't know what a dot card is, it is a card that is NFT
[00:15:00] capable
and any, any your phone, any major phone can interact with it. So the other person on the other end doesn't need to have a dot card for them to get your contact information. With that, it's, Aaron, thanks for plugging the site.
We do have a class coming up on Thursday, the 13th of February, 2025. For those thinking about personal brand and some networking as personal branding and intro to networking take a look at the website in the show notes below to sign up and we'd love to see they're
yeah, great. We are passionate about teaching sustainable career management skills. And helping you over, over time with your journey. With that, Aaron, any final words?
I was going to say, if you're listening on your podcast platform, make sure you leave a review and put a comment, or even just if you have a question on personal branding, how could [00:16:00] I brand myself into this future position or skillset send us a message on LinkedIn or put a comment on the podcast and we'll get back to you.
