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Your personal brand
matters more than ever.

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Here's how to connect it to
your business and your thought

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leadership on this episode of
The Speaking Your Brand podcast.

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More and more women are making an impact
by starting businesses, running for

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office, and speaking up for what matters.

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With my background as a TV political
analyst, entrepreneur, and speaker,

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I interview and coach, purpose-driven
women to shape their brands, grow

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their companies, and become recognized
as influencers in their field.

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This is Speaking Your Brand, your
place to learn how to persuasively

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communicate your message to your audience.

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Hi there.

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Welcome to the podcast.

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I'm your host, Carol Cox.

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I wanna talk today about
connecting your thought leadership.

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With your personal brand, now I know
you wanna have a positive impact

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on the world, and you may feel
like cultivating a personal brand

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is unnecessary or self-indulgent.

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Or that's what other people do
or that's what influencers do.

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Or maybe you just feel like you
just don't have the time for it.

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But here's the thing, you have
a personal brand, everyone does.

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Whether or not you are actively
cultivating it or not, your

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personal brand is how other people
would describe you, not just your

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qualities and your characteristics.

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Like you're smart, you're
kind professional, but

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also what matters to you.

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And so do people know of what matters to
you, the better world that you imagine?

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And I think about this because I
had Tanya Gil Bza on this podcast.

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She's a professor of sociology now, the
executive director of the University

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of California's Washington DC Center.

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We worked with her and some University
of California faculty members to help

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them create their TED style talks
for an event that Tanya was hosting.

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And she said on my podcast
episode that she had found me

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and found this podcast in 2020.

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And it was my conversations,
my topics around feminism, my

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background in academia when I went
to graduate school for history.

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My focus on women's voices and women's
issues, that really drew her to me,

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and that's why she ended up enrolling
in our Thought Leader Academy and

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then having us work with her and those
faculty members on those TED style talks.

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My personal brand and my
thought leadership came

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through partly intentionally.

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Because the topics that I chose to talk
about and still choose to talk about, but

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also because I just really can't help it.

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It is so infused with who I am
and what I do that I can't help

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but talk about these things.

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However, I'm gonna share with you
in a little bit some pushback I got.

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Early on when I started Speaking
Your Brand, the business about a

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particular aspect of my personal brand.

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Now maybe you have a clear idea of
your personal brand and your thought

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leadership, or maybe like many of us, it
feels a bit murky or maybe your ideas all.

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All over the place, or you feel like you
have so many different threads throughout

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your career, you're not sure how to make
sense of all of them, and I believe that

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in this age of more and more content
that we're seeing online, whether human

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created or increasingly AI created your
personal brand matters more than ever.

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Potential clients and event
organizers can easily find

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lots of experts in what you do.

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What you want them to realize is what sets
you apart and why they should pick you.

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And you need these things for
your brand voice and your personal

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brand because simply being an
expert isn't enough anymore.

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You need your personal brand
to be impactful and memorable.

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I did an episode on connecting your
business and your thought leadership.

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So lemme give you a
quick recap of that here.

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'cause that's gonna be important
for understanding then how your

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thought leadership connects
to your personal brand.

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If we think about what it is that you
do in your business, your business

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provides something useful, something
specific to your clients and customers,

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usually that's a tangible outcome.

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So your clients come in, they are at.

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Position A and you're gonna help them
get to B or C or D or Z, and they go

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through the process that you've created
to help them to get to that end point

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that you, that you're helping them get to.

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You could be a web designer, you could
be a coach, you could be a copywriter,

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you could be a business strategist,
you could be a financial planner, you

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could be a scientist, you could be
a physician, whatever your industry

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is, whatever your area of expertise
is, you're providing something useful

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and specific to help your clients.

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Achieve the goal, and now we think
about your thought leadership.

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Your thought leadership is
separate from your business.

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In your business.

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You are marketing and selling to attract
those specific clients, to help them to

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get to that end goal through your process.

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Now, your thought leadership really runs
as a parallel track to your business.

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It's why.

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You do the work you do, why you
chose that specific business or

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that specific target market, those
types of clients to work with.

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It's the why.

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If you think about thought leadership,
thought leadership is your point

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of view on your area of expertise,
your industry or even society.

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A whole, let me give you a
concrete example here with

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my own thought leadership.

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My thought leadership is around
the importance of public speaking

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to advance women's leadership and
gender equality, making sure women

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have a voice in important decisions
and a seat at the proverbial table,

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whether that's in government and
politics, business, tech, media.

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Ai, whatever it happens to be.

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So my thought leadership is related
to what we do as Speaking Your Brand,

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because obviously Speaking Your
Brand, our mission is to champion

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and advocate for women's voices.

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But that thought leadership is
not a marketing and sales message.

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A marketing and sales message says
you have a problem or you have a need.

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Here's the solution.

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So.

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Speaking your brand's case, your
problem, or your need is that you

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need help clarifying your ideas,
creating your signature talk,

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understanding how to put together
an impactful keynote or TEDx talk.

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And the solution is that we have
the experience, the processes,

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the frameworks, the coaching and
the support to help you do that.

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So that's why I see thought leadership
as running as a parallel track to

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your business is that bigger why,
for why this business matters to you.

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Now, where does your
personal brand fit in?

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Is that the same as
your thought leadership?

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And I don't see them as the same because
your thought leadership is a, is about

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the thing that you want to see happen.

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So gender equality, making sure women have
a voice and important decisions, that's

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the the outcome that you're looking for.

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That's what thought
leadership is driving to.

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Your personal brand is the who
you are, the embodiment of your

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thought leadership message.

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You are the face and the voice of
your thought leadership message.

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Now, of course, you want your thought
leadership to carry through more people,

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not just yourself, but right now as the
one who's creating thought leadership

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message, you are that embodiment.

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You are that messenger.

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Your personal brand, as I
mentioned earlier, is how

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others see you and describe you.

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Plus it's what they see reflected
back that's important to you.

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Do people know what's important to you?

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Do people know what your mission is?

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Your bigger why, your thought leadership.

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That's how that your thought leadership
and personal brand get integrated.

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If we think about my personal
brand, it's around feminism.

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Women's issues.

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I have this background in history
and politics and academia.

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I like to think about big ideas.

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I like to help other people think
about their big ideas and make them

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concrete through public speaking.

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Now, I mentioned earlier that I
got some advice and when I started

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Speaking Your Brand as a business,
and several people told me.

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That I shouldn't talk much about
my background in local politics

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and specifically my background as a
chairperson of the Democratic Party

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in the county where I lived, and as
a democratic political analyst on TV

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news, which I've been doing since 2005.

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And so I, of course, I, I took in what
they had suggested to me, but it didn't

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feel right because my experience in local
politics and being on the democratic

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side, believing in progressive values.

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It's so integral to who I am.

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It's so integral to my thought
leadership and to my personal brand

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that it wasn't something that I
could just discard or much less hide.

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I would never wanna do that,
and so instead I found ways to

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integrate it into my thought
leadership, into my personal brand.

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That feels authentic and genuine to me,
and then hopefully comes across if you

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feel like you have some aspect of your
career or your background where you're not

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sure if you should integrate it or not.

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It is up to you to, as far as
what, how you feel about it.

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I believe there's a way to find the
thread to connect everything together

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so that it feels cohesive and it feels
authentic and genuine to you because

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you can shape your personal brand
based on what you choose to talk about.

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And to whom and the threads that
you decide to bring to pull through.

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Here's the thing about personal
branding and thought leadership

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is that consistency is important.

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It really is about finding the thread
through things that seem unconnected.

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So if we think about my background,
I have a background in with

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a graduate degree in history.

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I've been involved in politics.

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I have founded two technology companies.

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I now do Speaking Your Brand.

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I'm working on AI projects.

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So what is that thread?

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They seem like.

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Very, very different things, but
the consistent thread all through

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my life, really from high school and
college all the way through, is about

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women's voices and women's leadership.

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I'm always looking for women's voices
and whatever it is I'm looking for

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their stories, their experiences,
'cause I wanna make sure that women have

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these decision making powers as well.

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Now with the increase in content online
and soon even more content being generated

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by ai, it'll be harder for your content
to be seen because of all the algorithms

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and just the saturation of content.

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It's also gonna be harder for
people to know what to trust.

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What is real and who even who is
real because the DeepFakes and the

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AI generated quote unquote, people
are getting really sophisticated.

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That's why your personal
brand matters more than ever.

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It's essential.

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It's around trust and
it's around authenticity.

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Now, AI can craft stories.

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I've been using chat GPT and
I can feed it prompts and it

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can do a pretty good job of.

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Using story structure and writing stories.

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But the thing that it can do, even though
it can try to mimic it, but it can't do

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it, obviously the way that we can do it
is provide the depth and the nuance that

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come with genuine human experiences.

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That's what makes us
relatable to other people.

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Our stories is how we.

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So an AI might be able to craft
a story, but it's probably less

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likely to strike a chord, hopefully,
with the audience than our own.

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True stories are.

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The other thing that I think about is
that real life stories are human embodied

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stories are kind of unpredictable.

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We don't know necessarily
what's gonna happen, and then

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often makes them intriguing.

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Of course, AI tools like Chat, GPT.

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They are built on patterns
and predictability.

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So sometimes their stories can can
follow that set path and seem less,

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less engaging or less captivating.

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And that's why I emphasize
so much on this podcast.

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When we think about our thought
leadership and our signature talks and

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our presentations is making sure we put
ourselves into it, our own experiences,

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our own stories, our own journeys.

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Not getting stuck in that expert
trap where we're just teaching

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and training based on all of this.

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Content that we've accumulated
over our careers and we just wanna

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push it out to our audiences.

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Instead, we wanna make sure that
we're putting ourselves, our thought

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leadership, our personal brand, and
our stories into the content and

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presentations that we're creating.

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And really, your signature talk
integrates all three aspects of what

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I've been talking about in this episode.

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Your business, your thought leadership.

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Your personal brand, and this is
why I also love public speaking,

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especially in person public speaking,
but even live virtual public speaking

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on Zoom or on a webinar platform is
because you know the person is real.

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You know, especially in person.

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You know that the speaker who
is standing in front of you

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delivering that talk is real.

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We don't have to worry about whether
or not the person is real or not.

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So yes, doubling down on public speaking
as a marketing and visibility strategy.

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Now I know that.

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Building your personal brand and
cultivating your personal brand can

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feel messy, and you know what stories to
include and, and which ones are the right

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ones, and how does it all fit together.

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This is the work we do together
in our Thought Leader Academy.

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We're helping you to connect your thought
leadership, your personal brand, your

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story, your message, your framework,
your ideas all together into your

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signature message and signature talk.

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So that you have that really solid,
clear, and confident foundation that you

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can use not only in your presentations
and talks, but for all the different

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ways that you're sharing your message
on your website, in your emails, social

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media, podcast interviews, and so on.

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If you would like to work with us,
go to Speaking Your Brand dot com and

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you can explore the different ways
that we can work together, including

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in our Thought Leader Academy.

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And I invite you to schedule a
consultation call with us so we can get

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to know you, learn about your work and
your goals, and how we can work together.

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And you can schedule that call by going to
Speaking Your Brand dot com slash contact.

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Until next time, thanks for listening.