0:00:00 A: I’ve been trying and you know, I’ve been tested. Welcome to the Friends In Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemima, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 A: Let’s get started. Welcome to the Friends In Business podcast. Ain’t nothing gonna stop me now.
0:00:43 Ben Wright: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Friends In Business. Hello, Jemima. Lovely to be sitting here again.
0:00:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: Ben, How lucky am I good to hang out with you again today.
0:00:52 Ben Wright: Well, I wasn’t gonna say that. I will maybe speak with my wife if she agrees with her or not. In fact, my little one, I can’t wait to see my little one today. She went off to daycare this morning saying, now, Mummy, you’re going to pick me up early
0:01:02 Jemimah Ashleigh: After lunch, was the request.
0:01:05 Ben Wright: No, it was actually. She started it after morning tea. We’re going to have morning tea. She normally revolves around picking you up afterwards. And Mummy said, sure, my darling, we’ll get to that point in time. But as we’re getting into today’s podcast, I was actually thinking about Amali. And just when we see her, she just loves spending time with us. We are her world. Her mummy and her daddy are her world. That will certainly change down the track. And for her, the brand of your mum and dad, the personal brand that your mum and dad have, is just so strong. And I told Amali off this morning for something and she was in tears. And then within three minutes, she was straight back around me shoulder, eye jumping around. And they rebound really quickly. But for me, that personal brand you build with your kids is so strong. If only we had that with everyone in our work, how easy life would be.
0:01:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: What a concept.
0:01:52 Ben Wright: What a great concept. So I think we should spend some time talking about that. And I actually think you are best placed out of us to be able to talk through personal brands.
0:02:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: So. Because I teach that every day. It’s part of it.
0:02:03 Ben Wright: Yeah. Or maybe it’s also that I nipped at it. No, I’m definitely not. It’s something that I work really hard on and we’ll add some value as we go, but, yeah, great. So let’s talk personal brands.
0:02:13 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s really important. It’s one of those things, Ben, that I think people think as an afterthought. Like, it’s like, oh, people Know who I am. I was like, oh, your reputation and personal brand aren’t the same thing.
0:02:23 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:02:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: So, Ben, I’m gonna ask you a question here to start this off. Have you ever had a bad day at work?
0:02:28 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:02:29 Jemimah Ashleigh: Have you been late to a meeting before?
0:02:31 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:02:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: With a client?
0:02:32 Ben Wright: Yes.
0:02:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Not great. Not feeling.
0:02:35 Ben Wright: Not often.
0:02:36 Jemimah Ashleigh: Here’s the thing. Most people think that that’s your personal brand. That’s actually your reputation. And this is where it gets really important to understand the difference. The reputation is how you’re turning up to things. The reputation is that he was a little bit late. He’s a little bit grumpy today. But these things can be recovered by our personal brand pretty easily. If we’re seen as we’re late every time to a client, it’s wildly different than a once off. These things are really forgiven quite badly. We’ve all had the bad day. We’ve all accidentally missed the meeting. And we’ve become very forgiving on that since Zoom. Since most of our meetings now on Zoom and the pandemic happened, it’s like, oh, calendar issues really do happen. We have to be aware of that. So I think what’s really clear out the gate is that what we need to make very clear here, that your reputation is part of it, but your personal brand is everything. That. So intentional.
0:03:21 Ben Wright: Yeah. Okay, got it. So your personal brand’s almost driving your reputation to some degree.
0:03:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. And can actually supersede your reputation in many, many ways. If you’ve got a really good personal brand, your reputation will absolutely be ignored if it’s strong enough.
0:03:36 Ben Wright: Great. Okay. So what are we going to talk about today when it comes to. I’m assuming we’re going to talk about building a personal brand.
0:03:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: We are going to talk about that. But firstly, I’m going to give you sort of the first reason why is it important?
0:03:47 Ben Wright: Yeah. Right.
0:03:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: 50% of women will not return back to pre pandemic levels in the office.
0:03:52 Ben Wright: Right. It’s a shame, isn’t it?
0:03:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: Interesting. And men are about 30%. So you guys even aren’t a little bit bulletproof on this. We’re sitting around, you know, 50% for women and 30% for men.
0:04:01 Ben Wright: And why women more than men?
0:04:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: Mostly because our childcare has become a lot harder, especially with anyone with a cold and flu now has been absolutely decimated from going in. My sister has multiple children and she works one day a week at this point because she can’t go in. If one of the kids even has a cough or a sneeze. We’ve really taken this idea of cold and flu really seriously. We also established really, really good flexible working arrangements that worked and businesses saw the benefit, which I think that before that, you know, employer and employers wanted to have eyes on their people. Right. They wanted to know, are you doing. Entrepreneurs have known these for years or do a lot more work? If we’re left unsupervised and we don’t have to attend Karen’s birthday party at lunchtime, we’re all stoked about that.
0:04:47 Ben Wright: I’d go if there’s chocolate cake.
0:04:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: I would only go if there’s cake.
0:04:53 Ben Wright: Letter to employers, birthdays, compulsory cake. Sorry I cut you off. Let’s keep going.
0:04:57 Jemimah Ashleigh: The point is here that how reputation and how our personal brand is actually now going to be more and more dictated by the other things that we’re doing, other than just turning up in the office. And that’s what’s really important here. So today I really want to go through the three things that you need to know when building a personal brand. So firstly, what is a personal brand? Let’s go into that. So the first thing you need to think about is what do you want to be known for? And you think people would think about this? They don’t. What do you want to be known for? Is it the go to sales dude? The sales strategist? And I bet that that’s yours. I love being known as a visibility expert. I absolutely love it when people hear visibility rewards. I get tagged all the time on, like, who can help me with this? That’s what you want, right? My reputation and my personal brand. Tell me and tell everyone else that this is what I do with. But also, it’s a little bit deeper than that. It’s how likable are you? How friendly are you? How approachable are you? I know that when people have met me through podcasts or gotten exposed to me through courses or programs, they meet me and one of the first things they’ll say is, oh, you’re the same person. Yeah, that’s who I am as a person. And the personal brand needs to be closely aligned to that. If you, as an example, have you ever seen Tony Robbins wearing a tuxedo?
0:06:09 Ben Wright: No, I don’t think I have.
0:06:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: You haven’t?
0:06:11 Ben Wright: He must have when he got married.
0:06:12 Jemimah Ashleigh: I don’t think he did. Because so far from his personal brand. Have you seen Oprah wearing sweatpants with food on it?
0:06:19 Ben Wright: No. No. She’s very professional.
0:06:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: She is. And this is the thing that we curate, these personal brands really, really Strongly. And I think this is where it gets really important that we understand that it’s a choice. We get to decide what that looks like. Reputation will otherwise dictate what it could be, and that’s a real difference there. So what else goes into a personal brand? Colors. What colors that you wear? You and I actually have very, very similar personal brands in clothing, where we both have darker blues, whites.
0:06:48 Ben Wright: Yeah. Mostly plain colors.
0:06:50 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:06:51 Ben Wright: Well, except for you, too.
0:06:52 Jemimah Ashleigh: Or floral print. But it’s all very much in the same. If I turned up in a hot pink dress, you would actually be like, is everything all right? Is everything okay? You know me well enough that it would be like, this is a little out of.
0:07:02 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah.
0:07:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: Same.
0:07:04 Ben Wright: If you saw me turn up to a customer engagement without a shirt on. It’s just something I just.
0:07:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: It was a new sales tactic you’re trying. I’m. Obviously, I’ll be supportive, but I’ll have questions later. You know, Great for you. What’s happening here is that we’re teaching people how we’re going to turn up. So clothing is one other things for particularly the ladies. Jewelry, makeup. These things sound really boring. You think about it. Hair.
0:07:25 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:07:26 Jemimah Ashleigh: You said to me this morning, I’m going to shave my beard. And I was like, okay, that sounds great. You’re like, I don’t generally do with a bit of scruff
0:07:34 Ben Wright: And customer facing, I generally will avoid it. Yeah.
0:07:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: 100%. And this is a choice that we’re making because it is the professionalism that we bring into these things.
0:07:40 Ben Wright: Also, it must impact your confidence. I know. For me, I am more confident when I’m dressed and I present.
0:07:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: For sure, I imagine if you handed me a microphone and I know that I’m looking good, I’m going to perform a lot better than if you handed me one. When I’m in sweatpants, my hair’s a little bit scraggly. I’d be like, ha, ha. The same things will probably come out, but the confidence level would definitely be impacted. So these things really go into making our personal brand makeup for ladies, you know, And I want to talk about this from a headshot perspective. Particularly for women. What they tend to do for photo shoots is cake you and makeup. My advice is catch me on the best day.
0:08:15 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:08:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: I want to look like me in the street. I’ll give you an example. Have you ever jumped onto a zoom call and the photo is there and you’re waiting for that person to turn the camera on, and that person is a model and you’re like, damn, this person’s going to be the hottest person in the planet. And then it’s just like, hi, how are you? Because it’s the best photo that’s ever been taken of them. Do you know what I’m talking about?
0:08:33 Ben Wright: This just takes me back to the days of online dating, which was a very long time ago for me, when profile pictures differed to the real thing. But, yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think there’s a point here, too. Whilst we want to present our best selves, we want to present our real selves.
0:08:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: Our real selves. And I always say to, like, when you grow your profile and you’ll start to do your interviews, you’ll start to do awards nights. And I always say, I want to look like you’re catching me on the best day. I want to look like me. I don’t wear lipstick. I don’t do that stuff. I barely wear makeup for the simple reason that I want to look like me whenever you see me. The next thing I’d say in here that the next part for this is what we want to start building as the brand. So this can look like a logo, fonts. The things that we would do for our business brand, we should generally have for ourselves. And I think it’s quite undervalued, particularly if you’re doing things like, for anyone here that wants to be an authority, it’s really great to put the business forward. But, Ben, quick question. How many businesses have you owned?
0:09:29 Ben Wright: What are we up to Number eight.
0:09:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great. Brilliant. Here’s the problem. All those businesses, the seven others have gone somewhere else. There’s been cases where you’ve sold the business and it’s done really well. You’ve liquidated a business, it’s fallen over, you’ve closed the doors, whatever that looks like for anyone. But entrepreneurs have, on average, 12 businesses before they find the thing that really fits. Those skill sets need to follow us. if we don’t have a place to put that, our social media, our own website, these things can get lost very quickly. Our personal brand is everything that we have done, our experiences. We constantly joke that you and I have lived multiple lives, and that’s why we do this podcast, because we’ve got to share our knowledge somewhere.
0:10:12 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
0:10:14 Jemimah Ashleigh: That these things transfer across, and sometimes that’s just in our personal brand because we don’t always get to take the business with us.
0:10:20 Ben Wright: Okay, great. So what else comes into personal brand?
0:10:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: The next thing is your values. This one is the one that I really want people to really have a think about, because the values that you have as a person and the values you have in your business might be a little bit different. Not necessarily, but sometimes they exist. So one of the things we see people come undone with, particularly in personal branding, is what hill are you willing to die on? What is so important to you that you’re willing to take a stand? So as an actual example of this would be women’s rights. We’re seeing this more and more across the world that we’re seeing people speaking out and making real political stances. Politics. Another one, really simple. If you’re backing one party, particularly in somewhere like the United States for the last few years, you picking a side tells us about your personal values and will have impact in your business. Thirdly, what causes are you willing to get behind? Is it when Tang’s Design my jewelry business backed the pro gay marriage plebiscite that we know we lost customers from that, but we also know we gained a ton as well. There are real cause and effects that you need to take into account here. What are you willing to have values on?
0:11:36 Ben Wright: And does the same go if you decide to be agnostic, for example? My business is politically agnostic. I do not get involved in politics.
0:11:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: My business would not either. My personal brand, though. Well, she’ll absolutely jump in and have a fight with someone if she needs to, right?
0:11:49 Ben Wright: Well, my personal brand is absolutely. I won’t get involved in that. I won’t get involved in religion. And that is because I believe that people have a right, every right to choose, to choose, whether you do or don’t engage.
0:12:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. The question that I always ask is, like, have a think about your values, though. Is there a hill you’re willing to die on? And that’s what’s really important here. I’m not telling anyone to go and pick a color or pick a font or, you know, you have to have a certain makeup or anything. What I am saying is it has to be chosen, and you can absolutely back or not back anything that you want to do, but get clear on it. Because there are choices. These choices that you make will have real consequences.
0:12:22 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
0:12:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: For better or worse, that’s where you’ll end up.
0:12:25 Ben Wright: Yeah, good.
0:12:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: The other thing and the final thing, I really run around this out here, and I know we’ve talked about really different facets here, but one of the things that I really want to talk about here is what I refer to with all of my clients as the ten things. So one of the things with personal brands that I think people get very confused on is. But if I gave you a microphone right now, could I get you to get up for 10 minutes right now to the podcast people who are listening at home and talk to me about how to deck a house, the processes. In all seriousness, could you do it?
0:13:02 Ben Wright: Oh, well. And now there’s a loaded question here because I have just gone through relaying.
0:13:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Could you do it?
0:13:07 Ben Wright: The answer is no. I think I could talk about elements of it, but not 10.
0:13:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: But you could explain how you went to the. You could explain you went to Bunnings and how you pick out the. Like we could pad you out for 10 minutes if we need to. If I could give you some questions.
0:13:17 Ben Wright: You could get me there?
0:13:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: I could get you there for 10 minutes. Here’s the thing. Is it worthwhile your time doing that?
0:13:22 Ben Wright: No.
0:13:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: Is it going to help you get a sale?
0:13:24 Ben Wright: No.
0:13:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: And this is where one of the things I teach so much, because what happens when you figure out how to talk to the media? When you have podcast opportunities popping up all the time and media and we teach our clients to get about minimum 400 media opportunities a week, you will get so distracted about the stuff that doesn’t matter. Do you have an opinion on the iPhone?
0:13:46 Ben Wright: I have an opinion on a lot of things. I don’t share them all out.
0:13:50 Jemimah Ashleigh: For sure, but this is the problem when you start to get these things and you’re quite addictive. Right. So personal brand, we recommend that you have 10 things. The 10 things are in your business and also in your personal brand. And sometimes they’re aligned, sometimes they are not.
0:14:03 Ben Wright: So these are 10 things you can talk about for 10 minutes on.
0:14:06 Jemimah Ashleigh: Absolutely. These are the things that you’ll also be around social media. What do you want to share on social media? What are you an expert in? So think about for your business. Sales is going to be one of them for you. One will be about your family, One will be about the life and building a life that you love.
0:14:20 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. Leadership, health and fitness.
0:14:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: See, straight away, we’re getting a bunch of them now with some of those things go across into the business. Absolutely. They won’t always be the same. You’ll have a hard time in the business talking about family because Ben has a family. The business doesn’t. They’re a little bit different. So this is why we say to get really clear. And this is also why we really hammer about the values part. Because if you’re going to build a personal brand and you’re going to be willing to stand on a hill and talk about something there are real consequences for this. So know where your values are and know what those look like.
So let’s talk about what they can look like. It can be as simple as what charities that you get behind, what type of businesses you really care about. I had one client who loves Bruce Springsteen. It’s his favorite thing in the world. And lo and behold, about a year later, after he tells me this story, and I went, yeah, no worries. You can have Bruce Springsteen as one of your 10 things. As a bit of a joke, we found a story. He got to meet Bruce Springsteen in Las Vegas. Wish this was a joke. And he got to, like, hang out with him and become sort of mates with him. They send Christmas cards for each other.
0:15:22 Ben Wright: Cool.
0:15:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s very simple when it comes down to personal brand, about what you have to think about for these things. So it’s a very easy way to do it. You draw the business on one side of the paper. It’s very practical business on one side of the paper and you on the other. And you draw ten little lines coming off. Sometimes they’ll cross over, sometimes they won’t. You want to think about using these 10 things as helping you figure out what your social media is going to be, what kind of video content you’re wanting to create, what sort of podcast episodes could you do? What are the conversations that you want to have with the media? What podcasts can you pitch for? But also, what are the things that you want to be known for and leaving in other people’s mouths when you’re not there? Your reputation is everything when it comes to business.
0:16:04 Ben Wright: Got it. I like it. So we’re actually talking here about we started with reputation. We started to move into a personal brand and what it can mean for you and defining it. But I think what we’ve actually moved into from that point in time is how do we use a personal brand to benefit our business?
0:16:19 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, absolutely. And really, that legacy piece. Because this is where I think we get really stuck in business, that sometimes we don’t hit that legacy piece long enough.
0:16:27 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:16:27 Jemimah Ashleigh: Because we are so focused on that business aspect. And that part of, like, what good are you going to also do here?
0:16:33 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:16:34 Jemimah Ashleigh: If you’re making this stand and you’re making this, if you’re going to go out there and do things, what do you want to be known for? What are the things that people are going to be saying about you when you’re not in those rooms? Your personal brand often is seen as quite accidental. And I Don’t think that’s always the case.
0:16:48 Ben Wright: Yeah, look, I think that’s probably my key takeaway from today is have a look at your personal brand and work out what you can do to benefit your business.
0:16:56 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, for sure.
0:16:56 Ben Wright: With it. Right. We all got personal brands, but have we all actually had a look at how that personal brand can really positively impact our business? I don’t know if we all have. So that’s my takeaway. If you haven’t, please spend some time looking at that personal brand and what you can do to benefit the business.
0:17:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, for sure. I think my key takeaway here is, and it’s one that I will always come back to, is the reputation part. Reputation and your personal brand aren’t the same thing. And a strong personal brand will always overtake a reputation. Always. We see countless studies of this on regular times and we see countless people, entrepreneurs who go into liquidation and they just start another business and you’re like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s crummy, isn’t it?
0:17:33 Ben Wright: Yeah.
0:17:33 Jemimah Ashleigh: Not saying it’s always good, but they’ve got that so they might as well use it.
0:17:36 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, they’re not going to make many friends in business.
0:17:40 Jemimah Ashleigh: No. But thankfully we are some friends in business.
0:17:43 Ben Wright: Absolutely. We love hearing from how we can help our listeners, so please don’t be afraid to get in touch. Bye for now.
0:17:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve been trying, you know, I’ve been tested.
0:17:55 A: Thank you for listening to the Friends in Business podcast. This episode was brought to you by your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley, recorded in beautiful Noosa, Queensland. For more insights and resources, Visit [email protected] and Jemima JemimaAshley.com if today’s podcast has helped you, we’d be so grateful if you could leave a review and share with someone you know. This will help more people in the world benefit from the hard work we are putting in to bring you the best content we possibly can.
