Building an Unforgettable Personal Brand Worth Millions That Drives Career Success

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Today we are talking about personal branding and growth from digital marketing, and we have the perfect guest to help us talk through this Neil Schafer.

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Welcome to the show Well, thank you so much for having me, Eric.

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It's an honor to be here.

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So, neil, you're a fractional chief marketing officer, you're an author, a keynote speaker.

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Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

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I help companies with their digital marketing.

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The term fractional CMO means that it's less of just pure black box consulting, more of becoming, like you know, a fractional employee for various companies.

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I tend to work with small businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, helping with their digital marketing.

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I've also written six books, just came out with two new ones in the last few months, do a lot of speaking, teach at some universities, so I consider myself because consulting is a big part of what I do I consider myself an educator, really, really trying to help companies with strategy and education.

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And when I started doing this back in January of 2010, I thought to myself, what do businesses need?

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And back then I was just focusing on social media marketing.

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But I thought what do businesses need when it comes to social media?

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And I thought they need to be educated, but they also need to have a strategy, and for the past 15 years, that's really what I focused on those two areas.

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And what classes do you teach?

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Give us a sense of that.

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So I teach at Rutgers Business School.

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I teach a module on social media branding which is part of an integrated marketing communication certificate that Rutgers Business School has, and then, closer to home, in Southern California, I teach two classes at UCLA Extension one on influencer marketing One of the books I wrote was specifically on influencer marketing and the other one is on personal branding how to become an influencer, which is actually content I'm working on for my seventh book, hopefully next year, but really talks about professional branding with LinkedIn, all the way to becoming a content creator and focusing on building influence and business on things like Instagram and TikTok.

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Awesome, and just to check all the boxes, you also have your own podcast, right.

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Yeah, I have my own podcast, your Digital Marketing Coach.

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I publish four posts a week on my blog at neilschafercom.

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I have a YouTube channel.

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Video for me has always been the final frontier, so I need to do more there, but I have a YouTube channel that I'm looking to invest more in, especially, eric, I don't know how much you've dug into generative AI search, but it seems that YouTube videos and transcripts on YouTube is one area that AI large language models love to consume.

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So another reason to get more serious about video in 2025, my friends.

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Absolutely, and one of the reasons that I asked you to join us in the show is because I think, when it comes to personal branding and thought leadership, you probably have built a following on LinkedIn over the years.

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That is what I would consider to be top 1%.

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You have 48,000 followers.

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It's not just about the numbers but, like you said, you've been at it for a number of years and I think you've put out a lot of really great content across books and being a keynote speaker content across books and being a keynote speaker.

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So talk to us a little bit about building a personal brand.

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I'm very interested in that topic.

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On this show, I think it's a bit controversial for some people if they should do it, if they shouldn't, and I think some people sort of are on the fence about just what they should do and how much effort is it and those sorts of things.

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So we'd love to hear your story.

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So the personal branding there's a lot of different definitions is like where I like to start, and my favorite definition is something that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is attributed to saying, which is what do people say about you when you're not in the room?

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Okay, now, that's really really powerful if you think about it, because you want to be referred to jobs that might be of interest or appropriate to you, or clients or whatever it may be.

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So stay on top of mind, I think, for every business professional, especially in sales and marketing, is very, very important concept.

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So the way to look at the value of personal branding, once we understand what it is and why it's important, and it's digital and it represents you 24-7 because you're not always in every room, right?

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So it is this sort of important thing that will describe and you and will bring, or not bring you, various opportunities over the course of your career.

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Another way I like to look at it, once we get past the definition of the value of it.

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So when I teach this course, I ask people okay, how many here want to make like $100,000 a year in salary?

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And so everybody raises their hand, right, I go, okay, so let's say you graduate from university when you're 22.

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And let's see you work until you're 62.

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Let's see you work 40 years.

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So 40 years multiplied by $100,000 is $4 million.

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So when you're in a job interview or you're not even looking for work, but you get opportunities right, you want to be able to succeed in getting that job compared to everybody else around you, and what's going to help you do that is your personal branding.

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So let's say you invested a little bit of time so that you could raise that $4 million career salary up to $4.1 million.

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$4.2 million, that is what personal branding can do.

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When you think about it that way, it is extremely, extremely valuable.

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I would say there is a monetary value to personal branding that everybody should be wanting to pay attention to.

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Now the how of how you do it.

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There's two different components here.

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There's a static component and there's an active component.

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The static component really comes down to your digital website, which for 99% of professionals is LinkedIn, unless you have a blog, like we do or the top 1%, for most people LinkedIn.

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If people do a search for you, they're going to find you on LinkedIn.

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They're going to look at you on LinkedIn.

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So it really comes down to your profile and understanding that the LinkedIn profile today is very different than it was like a decade ago.

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Specifically, there's a lot of visual elements and there's a lot of extra areas where you can write content and better describe yourself.

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So really, with intent, we don't want people to say what they want to say about us when we're not in the room.

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We want to influence what they think about us when we're not in the room to say, oh, eric is a leading podcaster, or Eric is a leading CMO, or Eric is a great guy, whatever that is, whatever we want people to think about us.

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Same with corporate branding we want to control the narrative and we do that through what we put on our profile, both visually and textually.

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With intent, I mean even that professional headline.

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So when I do these social selling trainings there, I'll do.

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You know, I train a lot of insurance salespeople, so I'll look up a term, like you know, umbrella insurance and I'll show the top people that appear in Los Angeles, for instance, and just those headlines are very, very different and will attract different people.

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I urge you to do this for yourself.

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Do a search for, not your name, but do a search for your title or the sort of title that you would like to get in your next job or whatever that is Obviously if you're a small business owner, an entrepreneur what sort of the keywords that clients have put in to find you, and compare those headlines that appear in the search results and how they attract or repel certain people.

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It's a really fascinating exercise, but a lot of this you can really DIY with a little bit of time and with AI it now becomes your best friend because now you can test ideas and ask for ideas right to help you improve that.

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So the static part is you set it once.

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You forget it I mean everybody.

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After listening to this podcast, I just wrote a new book called Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth.

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It's a $4.99 ebook on Amazon, but it goes through all my advice on how to do that profile creation right and a little bit more.

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But you only need to spend, I think, an hour or two to get it done, get it out of the way.

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Maybe every few months you take another look at it, right, but beyond that it's the active part and this is where professionals are like I don't want to be spending an hour a day on LinkedIn and it comes down the last chapter of this book I wrote.

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I talk about a LinkedIn playbook.

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Right, you need to have this set defined of things you do on a daily basis, and that makes it a lot easier for you to be consistent.

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You don't even need to publish content daily to be active.

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But really, how your personal brand grows on LinkedIn is through the art of, either one, publishing content or, number two, engaging with other people.

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And if you don't want to publish content, you don't have any original ideas or what have you.

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Just engaging alone and commenting can bring you followers, can get people to recognize you.

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But really I talk about influencer marketing and personal branding and how to become an influencer.

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The thing that unifies all of them is the fact that all of these people, every influencer, is a content creator.

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They could not become influential I could not become influential without creating a content, whether it's a podcast or a blog or what have you.

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So, on LinkedIn specifically, it does come down to actually publishing your own content.

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If you really want to be known, right, and build your personal brand, accelerate the building of it and even if you want to become a thought leader, even more so it really comes from that content.

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So, once again, ai can give us lots of ideas for content that we can create on our own.

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There's also some other tools you can use, which I list in the book, but there's lots of tools out there that can really help you develop your own ideas and flesh them out into content to help you become more consistent on LinkedIn.

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And then the engagement engaging with people in your network, finding new people to engage with and if you were to spend the content creation piece is the hardest.

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Maybe, let's say, you just create something once a week and maybe you spend 15 to 30 minutes on it, let's say, but every day I would hope you're in LinkedIn engaging with 5, 10, 15 people.

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You know, put a timer on 5, 10, 15 minutes a day.

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That's all you need to do to keep in touch with your network, but also find new people to engage with that are aligned with your personal brand.

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So, once again, we're trying to increase our lifetime salary, right, so it's not asking a lot, but the benefits can really be a lot and you're not going to see the benefits overnight, but it really comes when you're up for a promotion or a company reaches out to you because they're interested in maybe hiring you because they found your content and they went to your profile and the brand aligned with what they were looking for.

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What have you?

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Or it might be a speaking opportunity, it might be a podcast interview opportunity.

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Whatever it is, I do think over time you see more and more of these opportunities come your way, and that's sort of the ROI of this, because it becomes then a tumbleweed effect Once you get on one podcast.

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The very first podcast I was interviewed on was Michael Stelzner's Social Media Marketing Podcast, which is like a top 10 social media marketing podcast.

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I didn't know what podcasts were, in all honesty, and after he interviewed me he says Neil, there's going to be a bunch of people reach out to you asking you to be interviewed on their podcast.

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So get ready and lo and behold, that's what happened.

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And the next podcast I was on was Entrepreneurs on Fire, john Lee Dumas.

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Now, all this started because I wrote a book called Maximize your Social about social media marketing strategy that Michael Stolzner wanted to interview me on.

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I could have written blog posts about it, which at some time I could have repurposed into a book, but it all comes from content, right?

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But that tumbleweed effect once you get going, once you get onto one stage, it gets easier to get invited onto more stages.

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What have you?

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So?

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I know this is a very, very long description to a very, very simple question, but I like to add the context, the why, the how.

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They're both important, but I would encourage every one of you, after listening to this, just go to your LinkedIn profile, does it say, but you could even cut and paste it into a chat, gpt, and say hey, what does it say about me?

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How would you define my personal brand based on my, on my own profile?

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And then, if I want to change my personal branding to be better known for a, b or C, what changes would you suggest I make?

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And that's a great way to get started.

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You could DIY the whole process.

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Yeah, I think that's great advice.

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People hire and want to work with people that they know, trust and like, and I think the way that you get to be known, trusted and liked is the two ways you said is by putting out content that you're an expert on or that you have opinions on, and by engaging with people right so that they know you and they like you and they ultimately trust you.

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I think that those are where some of the magic comes to life, you were saying.

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But the one thing I've noticed is that it seems like there's this bell curve in corporate America where if people are rated in performance on a scale of one to five, they say like 80% of people are a three right and I would say a lot of the people I've seen that invest the time to create a personal brand are those that are probably on the bell curve, like the top 10%.

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They're like fours and fives, those people who are what I like to call professionally ambitious, because a lot of people, I think they just sort of want to go through the motions and do what they have to do.

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But there's a lot of great examples of people who produce great content that put in extra effort, because this is extra effort, right, like you're not required to do it.

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But when people put in extra effort, that's generally what puts them into the top 10%, and they do it because they want to get to the next level, they want to take their career to the next level.

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That's what I've observed.

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Have you seen that?

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Yeah, if you're just putting in the motion just for the sake of the paycheck and you don't really enjoy doing what you're doing, you're not going to invest in your personal branding and you're probably not going to do a good job, right?

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So it really comes down to mindset.

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I consider myself a lifelong learner.

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I love learning about new things.

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So do you have that same attitude towards life or not?

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I think is one thing, but the other thing definitely is ambitious.

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Do you love doing what you're doing?

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If you love doing what you're doing, then you probably love learning new things about what you're doing and you probably want to do better.

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So there definitely are different personality types, different things that motivate people.

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I've always wanted to enjoy what I do from nine to five because it's a big part of my life, right?

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And if you're not enjoying it, then maybe you should be doing something different and personal branding can help you align yourself with a different direction if you want to go.

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But I do agree there is a lot of mediocrity.

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I remember when one of my fractional CMO clients was actually a Grammy award-winning musician and his assistant was in charge of the marketing and she was like, well, we're going to do a giveaway.

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I'm like well, what was the idea of the giveaway?

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What are you going to give away?

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How are you going to run it?

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What's the objective?

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And well, she said, I found this blog post and it looked really good.

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And I think that there's a lot of people who just they find random things in the internet or chat GPT, and they just go with it without really fundamentally understanding things on a deeper level, right On a more strategic level, and for this I think the internet does not have the answers.

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I think your experience and learning from your mentors at work does have the answers, because what is applicable to one company, one industry, might not be applicable to another, especially if you work in B2B I know we both have experience in.

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So there comes a point where you really do need to think at a deeper level than what appears online, I think is really the best way to say it.

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There's so many things where I'm looking for advice on something and the information's not online.

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People are just not talking about it because it's at that level.

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People tend to talk about the simpler things.

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Online is what I find vis-a-vis marketing, so it's really going to come down to you.

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You know, learn reading books, sometimes podcasts, but also just going to conferences, getting to meet people right in your company, in your industry.

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Don't wait for life to come to you, go get it.

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Absolutely.

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One of the things you mentioned is that how do you stand out when there's so many people that look just like you on social media, on LinkedIn you gave the insurance example.

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There's probably a million insurance agents out there.

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How do you stand out?

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How do people say you're one of the best out of the million?

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Same thing for realtors or even chief marketing officers.

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There's 10,000 chief marketing officers out there.

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How do you and I stand out?

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You do the things that you've done.

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You write great books and you do keynote speeches and you're on podcasts and you have a view on things, right.

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I think that that's really how do you stand out when there's so much saturation out there?

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Is that a big part of it?

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So, working again on this book, I've defined that there are 15 different elements of personal branding and some of the things like perspective, definitely one of the elements right.

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Niche is definitely another element.

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But things like story right.

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Like, well, what's your story?

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Because everybody has a different story and often why we do what we do and how we do it is defined by these stories of our past in our life.

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So for me, the first part of figuring out your personal brand and standing out is really introspective.

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It's really brainstorming all your experiences, all your passions, all your stories, what are your values, what's your why, and really from that, everybody has a unique brand.

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So the niche I think when we talk about realtors and insurance people, their niche is often their location.

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But even within their location, maybe some focus on luxury homes, some focus on single family first homes, young families there's lots of niches within niches and when you put that in your personal brand, this is exactly what I do within niches and when you put that in your personal brand, this is exactly what I do.

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I tend to be very general, but if I was to say fractional CMO for startup e-commerce brands in the fashion space, that alone is a very, very definitive brand as to who I help and it's definitely going to attract.

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If that person who works for a fashion, e-commerce and startup happens to see my profile, that's a match right.

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When I don't say anything, when I just say fractional CMO, it makes it harder for people to understand what I do and it makes it even harder for people in my network to refer me to potential business.

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But the more I niche down, the easier it is for people that don't know me to understand me, but also people that do know me to be able to understand when it's a good time to reach out to refer things.

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So you know, I think the easiest way to start is with the niche right.

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Once you get through the niche, what differentiates you from other people?

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What are those unique skills that you have, unique experiences?

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And, I do think, the story right.

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How many times have you been to a presentation and the person on stage starts with a story of how they got to doing what they're doing?

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Sometimes they're tragic stories.

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You don't need to be overly dramatic, but we all have business stories of why we do what we do and I think tapping into that's going to help you create something really, really unique.

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I think that's great advice.

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I liked your idea for helping people get started, if they don't know where to get started, of using AI to give it your LinkedIn profile URL and tell it.

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You know you're a LinkedIn marketing and personal branding expert.

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Analyze my profile and tell me how I can make it better.

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If these are the things that I'm trying to do, and I think it'll give you some really good suggestions for that.

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I've also done fun things like have a rewrite my LinkedIn profile and the voice of Homer's, iliad and the Odyssey.

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I don't necessarily recommend that, but it's a little fun.

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If you want to make personal branding a little fun, you can also upload your LinkedIn profile picture and tell it to roast you if you want a good laugh.

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But in all seriousness, I think like AI can can help you get going in this era of AI.

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My question is what do you recommend for people to specific to building their personal brand and being an influencer?

00:20:02.384 --> 00:20:10.382
It's sort of a different time we're entering here than the past five years, let's call it that's funny, as you were saying that I was reflecting on.

00:20:10.382 --> 00:20:30.423
So I published this book Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth on September 17th and I'm really sort of testing the market for it and I've got great feedback and I'm now going to expand it to include a paperback and I'm expanding three different chapters which I think are really really elemental, which are really really essential for growth on LinkedIn.

00:20:30.423 --> 00:20:38.526
But the other one is on content, because the way that people publish content and the way that people consume content on LinkedIn has changed over time.

00:20:38.526 --> 00:20:46.425
So if you haven't published something on LinkedIn recently, really spend five, 10 minutes a day on your feed to understand what you're seeing, what the algorithm is serving you.

00:20:46.425 --> 00:20:49.384
And the third section is AI and how it can be used.

00:20:49.384 --> 00:20:52.364
So I don't like to overly rely on AI.

00:20:53.175 --> 00:20:58.407
I think that AI is great when you have a use case scenario for it, when you can use it as a utility.

00:20:58.407 --> 00:21:07.272
I think really you don't need AI to get started on this, right, but definitely, you know, I would say that just like oh well, let's get on the internet and do a Google search.

00:21:07.272 --> 00:21:13.016
You know, 20 years ago, ai has very much become something similar not just search, but we can ask it for ideas.

00:21:13.016 --> 00:21:14.181
Bounce ideas off it.

00:21:14.181 --> 00:21:18.737
So I'm not going to say, hey, create your personal brand and all your LinkedIn content.

00:21:18.737 --> 00:21:27.781
You know, with AI, because AI lacks stories, it lacks emotion, it lacks uniqueness, because it literally just regurgitates everything in its large language model.

00:21:27.781 --> 00:21:37.895
But for ideas, when you're stuck, getting started with something on your canvas versus a blank canvas, will help you finish it sooner.

00:21:37.895 --> 00:21:41.385
And that's really the greatest thing about AI is you'll never have a blank canvas.

00:21:41.385 --> 00:21:43.721
Ai will always shoot out content.

00:21:43.721 --> 00:21:49.159
Even when it shouldn't be shooting out content and it's hallucinating, it will still give you content, whether you like it or not.

00:21:49.159 --> 00:21:53.263
So you still need to have that critical thinking skills to first say, hey, is this factual or not?

00:21:53.263 --> 00:21:56.016
And then, two, will it really resonate with my audience or not?

00:21:56.016 --> 00:22:03.846
But yeah, I mean I would say AI is your sidekick, your partner, your co-creator, your intern, your assistant, whatever you want to call it.

00:22:03.846 --> 00:22:06.388
At every step you can be confirming things with it.

00:22:06.388 --> 00:22:12.645
But at the end of the day, the creativity and your core content I would not really rely on AI.

00:22:12.705 --> 00:22:18.166
What AI does really well with content creation going a little bit deeper here is if you already have ideas and stories.

00:22:18.166 --> 00:22:22.144
You already know what you want to talk about and you feed that into the AI.

00:22:22.144 --> 00:22:25.941
It can help you repurpose that into shorter little bits.

00:22:25.941 --> 00:22:37.877
It can give you ideas of where you might want to expand upon certain ideas or change the ordering of things, but you don't want to start from absolute scratch and ask AI to write you the content.

00:22:37.877 --> 00:22:53.185
It always is better when you have your own content, asking it for ideas about hey, I'm a fractional CMO and I'm looking to engage with these types of clients and I want to be known as a thought leader in this industry and my personal branding is about this, this and this.

00:22:53.185 --> 00:22:58.536
Please give me 10 ideas for content that I should publish on my feed in LinkedIn and it'll give you great ideas.

00:22:58.536 --> 00:23:05.849
And from there you need to take an idea, flesh it out yourself and then, if you need help at developing that content, that's where I'd use AI.

00:23:05.849 --> 00:23:11.907
So you know, ai is great for the functional content and AI is great for ideation.

00:23:11.907 --> 00:23:19.720
And then AI is great at taking what you already have and helping you refine and improve it, but not just from scratch.

00:23:19.720 --> 00:23:23.728
You know, letting AI output something and cutting and paste that right.

00:23:23.728 --> 00:23:24.917
So it's a distinction.

00:23:24.917 --> 00:23:25.941
That's really, really important.

00:23:25.941 --> 00:23:36.970
But everything outside of that AI can be used to various degrees and when I started with AI, I was using all these different third-party tools because I'm like a marketing technology tool geek.

00:23:36.970 --> 00:23:42.403
But these days I've really gone back to ChatGPT because all these tools just integrate with ChatGPT.

00:23:42.785 --> 00:23:45.641
There are some who say that Claude is better, is more human.

00:23:45.641 --> 00:23:53.470
There are sites like Magi I think it's M-A-G-A-I where you can compare various outputs and find the large language model that best serves you.

00:23:53.470 --> 00:23:55.316
Obviously, google is another option.

00:23:55.316 --> 00:23:56.958
I just use ChatGPT.

00:23:56.958 --> 00:23:59.000
I pay $20 a month for the paid version.

00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:06.636
I train it to better sound like me and, yeah, I mean that's really the only tool I think you really need.

00:24:06.636 --> 00:24:24.976
There are some additional LinkedIn tools that I cover in my book that are like AI enhanced tools, that have like preset recipes for some of these things, but I think you developing your own prompting and revising that prompt and custom GPTs for your own work is probably the best way that I would recommend that you manage your time with AI today.

00:24:26.057 --> 00:24:45.430
I think that's great advice as we're going into 2025, what are the top two or three things that you would recommend to those who are professionally ambitious, that want to build a personal brand, want to be a thought leader and an influencer?

00:24:45.430 --> 00:24:49.746
What should they focus on in the next year?

00:24:50.875 --> 00:24:52.578
Well, number one perfect your craft.

00:24:52.578 --> 00:24:55.446
Learn what you need to learn about what you do.

00:24:55.446 --> 00:24:59.285
Consume podcasts, books, go to conferences, right.

00:24:59.285 --> 00:25:06.422
Influencers become influential because usually they're really good at something and they've perfected their craft over time.

00:25:06.422 --> 00:25:09.335
So that's something that goes without saying.

00:25:09.335 --> 00:25:13.544
Number two is really invest in content creation.

00:25:13.544 --> 00:25:15.167
Start getting your ideas out.

00:25:16.316 --> 00:25:39.433
In my class, I bring out a concept called the story bank and it's a concept that other professional speakers talk about, but it's really documenting all these stories or case studies, right, of things that you've done that have had impact in your career, in your personal life, or just things that you think about that help define you, whatever type of story it is, by putting those in some sort of a database.

00:25:39.433 --> 00:25:51.020
It could be Notion, it could be a Google Sheet that will really help you in developing that personal brand, but from those stories then you could begin to create really, really unique and original content.

00:25:51.020 --> 00:26:12.161
So, investing in content creation whether it be LinkedIn posts, I would start with LinkedIn posts, but if you feel confident, you can then start thinking about well, maybe I want to do a podcast, maybe I want to do LinkedIn video, maybe I want to do more writing and start a blog or write a book, but really the LinkedIn post is the easiest way to get started.

00:26:12.161 --> 00:26:23.586
But try to challenge yourself Once a month, I'm going to write something, or once a week I'm going to write something, and if you could publish every day, monday to Friday, you're publishing more frequently than I am and I've written three books on LinkedIn.

00:26:23.586 --> 00:26:27.837
So you definitely do not have to do it every day, but once a week, crafting something really unique.

00:26:27.837 --> 00:26:32.077
And I would recommend, if it's going to be a longer piece of content, just start a newsletter.

00:26:32.077 --> 00:26:42.266
I did an analysis of my posts that I've been publishing on LinkedIn over the past almost two years and the newsletters actually got the most impressions.

00:26:42.266 --> 00:26:45.921
You know, the newsletter is basically, instead of writing a post, you write an article.

00:26:45.921 --> 00:26:57.201
Once you get a hundred, I think once you get a hundred subscribers, you can name it and people you know will subscribe to it, and LinkedIn really does like to keep people on the platform and a newsletter is a great way of doing that.

00:26:57.201 --> 00:27:08.478
So that would be my recommendation is really just to start a newsletter where you know, once a week, share a story, right, that is aligned with your personal brand, that shares your expertise, that helps you build your personal brand.

00:27:08.818 --> 00:27:11.403
So the last part is AI.

00:27:11.403 --> 00:27:13.989
Just spend time experimenting with AI.

00:27:13.989 --> 00:27:24.428
Whatever you don't use AI for, try using it with it, because it's really going to help with your efficiency, with your consistency, with your creativity.

00:27:24.428 --> 00:27:27.482
It's like the internet itself, right, it's like electricity itself.

00:27:27.482 --> 00:27:29.116
It's going to help you in many, many different ways.

00:27:29.116 --> 00:27:34.640
And we are still at the very, very beginning of the very, very tip of the iceberg when it comes to generative AI.

00:27:35.060 --> 00:27:36.684
So really experiment more with it.

00:27:36.684 --> 00:27:39.938
Yeah, I mean, always have it open, always be thinking of different ways of using it.

00:27:39.938 --> 00:27:43.001
Try to find better ways of getting the information you want from it.

00:27:43.001 --> 00:27:47.186
So those would be my three things that I would recommend.

00:27:47.186 --> 00:28:00.559
Obviously, craft, become a lifeline learner there are so many ways to learn right now, offline and online and then build that personal brand through, ideally, writing content about your stories once a week through a LinkedIn newsletter would be my recommendation today.

00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:03.837
It might change if the algorithm changes, but that's what it is today.

00:28:04.019 --> 00:28:27.025
And then the third part would be the AI, and the extra credit would be, once you seem to get a little bit of engagement and success with the newsletter, if you could then put that into a 15 to 30 second or maybe 45 second video and really test LinkedIn videos, because we are seeing people get really good success with it Not everybody and it's very random, but those that are successful are really successful.

00:28:27.575 --> 00:28:30.788
Another way of using AI hey, here's an 800-word LinkedIn newsletter.

00:28:30.788 --> 00:28:36.886
I'd like to create a 30-second video script that covers the key points, that would be engaging and has a strong hook.

00:28:36.886 --> 00:28:38.336
Can you create one for me?

00:28:38.336 --> 00:28:58.787
And then, boom, you have a canvas, you have a rough draft of something that you could create a video for, and then creating the video is as simple as just as simple as your iPhone and recording yourself, bringing it into CapCut on your phone or on your computer, putting a title, adding captions, maybe doing a little bit of slight editing and you're done.

00:28:59.474 --> 00:29:05.819
And I think video is the final frontier for me as well, and there's this mindset that prevents us from doing more with video.

00:29:05.819 --> 00:29:09.876
But once you get going, I think it's really easy to do and it's another way.

00:29:09.876 --> 00:29:14.565
If you really want to accelerate the growth of your personal brand on LinkedIn, definitely video.

00:29:14.565 --> 00:29:20.279
And once you do that, I mean you could take those LinkedIn videos, you could put them on YouTube, youtube Shorts, you could put them on Instagram, tiktok.

00:29:20.279 --> 00:29:27.430
So I know that was extra credit, but that's a huge one for those that really want to be ambitious and go the whole way in 2025.

00:29:34.855 --> 00:29:35.115
I'm loving it.

00:29:35.115 --> 00:29:36.441
I recommend everyone be ambitious and embrace all of those ideas.

00:29:36.441 --> 00:29:39.412
Neil, thank you so much for being with us today, sharing your stories, your advice and your ideas.

00:29:39.412 --> 00:29:51.817
I'm going to link to your website so people can check out your books and your podcasts and all of your great content and get in touch if they'd like to learn more about all the great things you're doing.

00:29:51.817 --> 00:29:53.723
Really appreciate you being on the show today.

00:29:53.963 --> 00:29:54.325
Thank you.

00:29:54.325 --> 00:29:57.622
Oh, it's been my pleasure and I wish everyone the best of luck.

00:29:57.622 --> 00:29:59.606
And you know the future's now.

00:29:59.606 --> 00:30:00.636
Don't wait another day.

00:30:00.636 --> 00:30:01.618
Get started today.

00:30:01.618 --> 00:30:03.544
Make 2025 the best year ever.