The Power of Authenticity: Personal Branding Strategies for Executives with Alan McLaren

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs, authors, business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service-based business faster and easier.

[00:00:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And now, here is your host, business coach Bruce Eckfeldt

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[00:01:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Now back to our episode.

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Our guest today is Alan McLaren. He is co-founder at Strata Originals.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_01]: We're going to talk about personal branding, really a fascinating topic I think for anyone in the service sector.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Like we know that our personal brand, our reputation is really what sells.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we don't have products and tangible things to be giving away, to selling, right?

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_01]: It's about reputation. It's about perception.

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_01]: It's about how people kind of see you and your value and the work that you've done and the relationship that you're going to build.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: So personal branding is a key part of this.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Obviously personal branding is becoming much more sophisticated, much more complicated with the kind of the world of social media and platforms like LinkedIn

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_01]: and your ability to kind of get not only messages out there but your personality and your brand.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to talk to Alan about that stuff. It's a fascinating conversation.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I think this is an area that everyone knows they need to do something here.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Everyone knows exactly what to do or how to do it.

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm excited to have this conversation and see what Alan's discovered and the work that he does.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: So with all that, Alan welcome to the program.

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks Bruce. After that introduction, I don't think I have to say anything.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_02]: You kind of covered it all.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Well then we can jump in.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Well actually before we got to jump in.

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to get a sense of your background.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_01]: We met through a couple of different sources and I know you've done a lot of work with YPO and some of these other organizations.

[00:02:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just kind of curious what your journey has been, how you've kind of gotten into the work that you're doing today

[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_01]: and kind of the experience you've had with your own personal branding.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah it's funny. The first time I'm kind of on the other side of the aging situation.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_02]: But I've kind of run five businesses. I started into business equipment world and we never talked about personal branding.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And then I got into YPO, we never talked about personal branding.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I ran an Azdec listed IT security firm, never talked about personal branding.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Got into a marketing agency for almost 20 years and that's when the conversations around personal branding kind of coincided a little bit just prior to social media.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_02]: When that kind of kicked in. But prior to that it was more, I'll help you with a speech or a conference or whatever.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_02]: That was more of the distribution really wasn't there to get your personal branding in a big way.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_02]: So what happened in our world at the previous company was we started to play around with the concept of personal branding

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_02]: but we had it called thought leadership at the time.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. But what we found is that's very aspirational.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_02]: And so we said but everybody has a personal brand, why don't we talk about personal branding and make it a product make it something that's intentional somebody something that's digestible and understandable.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And so really through the journey at in at infinity which was the previous business to strata, we started to play around and then in the last two years said you know what, let's double down let's create a new company.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_02]: I would just focus 100% on this incredible world of personal branding. And that's kind of kind of how we brought self to strata originals.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I guess give me your kind of definition or talk to me a little bit about the difference between this thought leadership kind of idea that you mentioned versus personal branding and how do you differentiate those two things or how we evolved between those two things.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well thought leadership is what people ascribe to you. And personal brand is what you have right so we all have a personal brand. It's whether we're intentional about, you know, trying to find a way to leverage it I don't mean use it but I think it's a wrong word, but leverage your

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02]: experience with credibility or knowledge to be able to help and teach people what you know, and then hopefully they'll be, you know, path to your doorstep because they say, This is the person that I trust. This is a person I can build a relationship with.

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And he or she can help me, whether it's B2B or B2C whatever it is, it can help me through my buying journey to buy or to be an industry leader or whatever it is you're looking for.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_02]: It's really talking about intentionality of what you can do we and I hate to use this word but it's people think it's about ego sometimes and it's the least thing it's more about servant leadership.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_02]: It's about if you serve people with the things you know, then people will want to be with you. And that's kind of how we define the difference between solid or shipping personal brand.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And how is this world change I mean, you know we have so many platforms now it's so easy to get kind of content out there but that makes it so there's so much content out there. I mean, how has how have things evolved over the last decade from kind of a personal branding kind of strategy or kind of even just fundamental approach.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, you know the core comes back to the beginning is what what we call our brand. What is your brand DNA like what are you about. That's the first step no matter what you choose to do what platforms are a next step first is who am I, and is there a gap between who I am, and what I want the world to know, and what the

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_02]: world actually sees me as today. So once you close those gaps and are very clear on that then you make a decision on what type of content do I want to produce air go like you're doing a podcast, blog posts, videos pick pick the the medium, and then the platforms are where is my audience.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_02]: At the end of the day. So what we do with most of our clients said why don't we just focus on one platform let's get really good. And then you can make other decisions at inflection points and saying, All right, I've done this.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_02]: My audience is also an Instagram it's also on Facebook it's also on tick tock. It's also on YouTube, and then we can expand that or I want to do more podcasts I want to do more speaking gigs those are all.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_02]: All things you can do after you've started to get really good and your audience is starting to recognize you as that expert.

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Then the platforms become another method of distribution, but a big caution and Bruce you know this is you're pretty good at this each platform requires a different approach.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's not. I'll just push this button it will go to four or five platforms that doesn't work.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_02]: So the next question is, do I have the time to spend nine hours a week on this or do I have two hours or one hour a week to make sure that I can execute on this consistently because that's the secret sauce.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure everyone would love a personal brand at some point but like who who does this really.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_01]: How does it change the game for what type of person and how do you identify who that person would be.

[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_02]: So there's the business answer and then the real answer and the real answer is everybody has an opportunity whether you're an 18 year old student to kind of build your personal men with intentionality, but our business focuses on executives and a couple of reasons why they do that is because

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_02]: of my work in YPO we really understand how to talk to executives and they're not the easiest clients in the world and they need people that have credibility, because they don't it's not a marketing exercise I mean people think, well this is a marketing exercise it's

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_02]: not.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_02]: We spend more time on psychology and coaching than we ever dreamt before because you know a lot of these CEOs have imposter syndrome or they have fear of going on video or they don't want to look bad well they need someone is relatively mature to help them through that that kind of journey

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_02]: right so as you think through that our target is CEOs a because I think they can afford what we do because we're a premium offer and and and we know how to talk to them so that's our target CEOs their executive teams and then we have a vertical as well for the legal market as

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_02]: well which we can talk a little bit later.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so when you are kind of prospecting you're working with folks that want to engage in this.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Are there any kind of tell tales of like okay yeah if I see these things they're going to do really well here versus if I see these things this might be a real challenge for them.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Most of the time the folks that we're dealing with are the early adopters right so they've identified that there is a need to be able to build relationships and build trust.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_02]: In addition to the work that their company is doing in marketing.

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_02]: And so once and oftentimes we're the ones that help them through our evangelizing right they say oh that's really cool I get that.

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_02]: I need to be able to find more deal flow I need to engage my employees I need to get more referrals whatever those reasons are and there's a multitude of them.

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_02]: So then once they do that and say okay now they have the need it's very clear.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_02]: They have to be open enough to be able to listen to our coaching and you know this is a coach.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_02]: You can't take someone who's not going to listen to you because what's the point.

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah right so we look for people who are who trust us because that's important and of course that they are willing to take a few risks because this isn't obvious for people.

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not the easy thing to say well I'll just go to do two minute videos on recorded on zoom on my phone and I'm ready to go.

[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_02]: No most people aren't ready to go so trust us to help you learn about storytelling and learn how to actually use the medium effectively for yourself.

[00:10:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned this whole kind of who you are who you want to be perceived as what you're putting out there like how do you I guess work with an executive in terms of really kind of dialing in or crafting what their kind of personal brand strategy is versus what are the taxes they use to get that out there like what does that process look like for you.

[00:11:10] [SPEAKER_02]: So great great distinction and thank you because that's the difference between marketing and personal branding right marketing is the distribution of the message.

[00:11:17] [SPEAKER_02]: The personal branding is the exercise that I talked about so we spend the first thing we do with any one of our clients is a brand DNA session that's a 90 minute in depth interview we've got probably about 50 questions that we can ask them of course they may ask one that they'll answer for in one shot.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And then we come back to them with a map that says here is who you are about your core platform.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Here are the four or five things that support that core platform that you can talk about that can be reflected in the content that's there.

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And then of course we identify you know who your audience is where are they what are the groups on LinkedIn all the different people we can start to tag some of the marketing.

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_02]: So we do that two weeks afterwards we deliver the plan back to the client and I have to tell you it's it's the most enlightening process for us because we get people and it's 99% accurate after the interview they go yeah I wouldn't change a thing change that word change this I'm going.

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_02]: It's incredible because the in depth interview is so sometimes emotional as we ask questions like you know what advice would you give your 15 year old self.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_02]: We've had people just see you those big tough guys crying their eyes out in front of us or gone what happened here.

[00:12:32] [SPEAKER_02]: And the good news is they're really they take this very seriously and when they see the results they are one of a client told us yesterday I now have clarity on me.

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that was so cool.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And if I can make just for one second one client in Singapore told us thank you for changing my life and we went wait a minute personal branding here.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_02]: We didn't save any life.

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_02]: We're not like coaching it's not but here's what we asked her why she says, I now see myself the way you seem.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:13:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And so, there's a little bit of transformation and metamorphosis that goes on in our work.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_02]: We never expected that to be honest, but it is the most enlightening part of what we do as we help people launch themselves into a place that they were never comfortable before.

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And so, I mean, I don't make it or things that you tend not to kind of pull out into the into the personal brand strategy. I mean, you know, someone's into underwater basket weaving they could be really passionate about it but like it has no relevance to their, their

[00:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: professional kind of brand they're trying to build like how do you kind of choose what to kind of tease out and what to not tease out in that process.

[00:13:50] [SPEAKER_02]: The simplest thing is of course we start with the objectives right so what are they looking to achieve by this so if there's CEO and transition that are looking to get a new job then it's very specific on that front right so but the biggest thing is does it serve you.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Right, so the question we ask them is does it serve you so for example in my world said some people say well how can we never talk about politics I said because it doesn't serve me yeah.

[00:14:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Right, so my my two lanes are leadership and personal branding and they kind of touch on each other because I feel confident about the topics and I have credibility and expertise in those areas.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I may have some expertise in you know the Israel and Hamas war but I'm not talking about that because there's no win for me there. Yeah, why would I do that so it's the same thing the goals drive the content which drives the KPIs which ultimately drives the success.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah. And so once you kind of figure out this the brand DNA and the strategy. How do you figure out then what the tactics should be and I guess what what are the tactics you consider and then how do you sort between them.

[00:14:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So the first thing of course the simplest thing is, you know, is your audience ready to receive your stuff so if we talk about why POS an example. There are specific strategies that I talked to why POS about and say okay, who do we want to follow so if you're looking to do deal flow, and you're in the real

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_02]: estate space and make sure you're in this case a real estate network and let's go make sure we follow those people on LinkedIn so that they can now see your content not pitching anybody not doing anything.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_02]: We're just building relationships so that would be a tactic for a YPR if the other tactics are with the people that would support you in your life that we could tag on your content.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So when it goes out it gets distributed to more people automatically right and then what is your and this is really important. What is your strategy to celebrate others on the social platforms right so this morning Bruce let's be I posted something and you went on and you said that's great it sounds like an awesome

[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_02]: topic. If people did that if they left this podcast and all they did was celebrate others on LinkedIn, they are miles ahead of where they'll ever be because the LinkedIn algorithm likes that.

[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, tell me I guess tell me more about the algorithm because I think you know I think people are used to this from like Google and Facebook you know LinkedIn has its version like what is it trying I guess what it's what is like

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_01]: LinkedIn's goal like what are they trying to do and how does the algorithm kind of work and how have you figured out how to work with the algorithm effectively in terms of developing you know people's reach or people's impact.

[00:16:25] [SPEAKER_02]: So let me come clean here nobody really understands the algorithm.

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_01]: It's all guesswork.

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So it's all it is, but it's different than the other so what what LinkedIn looks like is very simple is that the more engagement you have with the people that are already in your network and then that next concentric circle out.

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And you're delivering very much like Google you're delivering content that your audience really responds to. So on average just to give you a number about 9% of the people that are in your network actually do what you did this morning and that's comment or like a post.

[00:17:00] [SPEAKER_02]: That's it.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_02]: So the 91% are just what we call lawyers.

[00:17:05] [SPEAKER_02]: But the lawyers are important.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_02]: The lawyers are important because stuff happens in that 91%.

[00:17:12] [SPEAKER_02]: These are people that reach out to you that are leads that show up.

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_02]: They'll they won't share your content but they'll view your content they'll come back for more.

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Because so what we do is we look at how your engagement is working because that's the number one piece.

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_02]: But we also look at is you are your views growing over time and every single one of our clients after a year they might have 4000% growth from the time they started.

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's all relative.

[00:17:40] [SPEAKER_02]: They started with one that's pretty.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_02]: But maybe they might have started with 50.

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_02]: But but my point is you have to in our case we recommend video because the video is the most authentic medium.

[00:17:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And one of our one of our offers is a do it for you model.

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_02]: We don't believe that we should be writing your content.

[00:17:56] [SPEAKER_02]: We believe we can write content for you about a video you just did with us because now it's authentic is it really is you not somebody behind the scenes pretending to be.

[00:18:07] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's, that's how we do it so the algorithm really consistencies number one.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_02]: The taking care of course hashtags and tagging and all of those things.

[00:18:18] [SPEAKER_02]: And then you know you can also ask some friends of yours on occasion to share some of your content offline, so that it looks like people are actually kind of in that 9%.

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And once it gets to a certain place.

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_02]: It starts to take its own, its own path and things over time because it is time.

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_02]: You'll start to see everything grow and people engage more.

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_02]: And you'll have people come out of the world for 20 years ago which has happened to me and mind blowing to see people come away from that far back and say, I remember that story right.

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's fun.

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_01]: What, you know some of these techniques you mentioned the hashtags and you know getting other people like and stuff like I guess how.

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_01]: How do you, you know on one hand kind of create or leverage these kind of strategies and these ability to kind of get more reach and to engage without kind of being too gamey or to like, you know, artificial in the process.

[00:19:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the idea is to not be gaming it every time.

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_02]: So when we did, let's use the example of today, we did the podcast with Dr. Ken Drut and and we would want to purposefully take this out as viral as we can.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And do you know why it's not because of us, because we saw the work he did and nailed it in your post was helpful to humanity.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_02]: So our entire world is about teaching and helping and growing.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_02]: So we saw this as, oh my God, let's get this out to the world everybody suffers with this stuff. He's going to be able to help wasn't about personal branding we never talked about personal branding.

[00:19:50] [SPEAKER_02]: We talked about imposter syndrome and grief and resilience and all the things that every leader goes through, whether they admit it or not.

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So we said, this one we're gaming the system. I'm tagging people. I'm hashtagging people. I'm asking people to share. I'm doing ads. Why? Because it'll be helpful to people that are out there.

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Is there a benefit to us? Of course, we become a halo effect for doc with Dr. Ken, but it's more helpful first and that that's the only time we've done that in two years.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Everything else is more organic.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_01]: What are I mean in terms of people that you've seen do particularly well or any any kind of patterns or threads that you've seen that people that do particularly well on these platforms, particularly LinkedIn.

[00:20:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Think ways they approach it strategies they use kind of who they are like what's worked for folks.

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_02]: It's it's they learn first of all, I don't want to overuse the word authenticity but they are who they are.

[00:20:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And they're real when they're on there because what we don't want people is to pretend. So if you look at me and you see me on my videos are saying, geez, Alan's not trying to be funny. Why? Because he's not.

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't tell a joke and make you laugh. So I'm not going to try to be funny. I'm not going to try to be Richard Branson or Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm going to be Alan McLaren and you're going to like me or you're not going to like me but I am me.

[00:21:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And we make sure our clients are exactly who they are as if we were having a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and a Starbucks. And I asked them a question and off they go.

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And then of course the important piece is everything has to be some sort of a story. Yeah, because that's what people remember. They don't remember here's the three things you need to do to do your personal brand is what's the story that got you where you are.

[00:21:37] [SPEAKER_02]: You're in the business of storytelling and you know that that works. That's what people remember. They're not going to remember everything I said they're going to remember. Hey Bruce brought the selling guy on. It was cool.

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_01]: They had some good conversations. That's all they're going to remember. And that's okay. Yeah, I must say my own kind of experience on this is having written, I write a lot and I do a lot of thought leadership work historically and getting on LinkedIn and really kind of developing a personal brand.

[00:22:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was a real struggle to be more vulnerable and more authentic and actually put stuff out there that I'm like, yeah, some people are really not going to like this and then realizing that that's okay.

[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_02]: It's the biggest shock right it comes back to that imposter syndrome and that fear. Right. It said when you realize that at the end of the day there's a human being on the end of that. Yeah.

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. And you're not pitching and I want to just be very clear. You don't do that with your work. I don't do that with my work as soon as you cross the line to buy my stuff. You turn people off.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. In fact, even over produced videos with you know too many too many bubbles and this and it's perfectly done and there's a beautiful thumbnail that doesn't work because it feels like marketing. Yeah.

[00:22:53] [SPEAKER_01]: It is funny. You have to be authentic. Yeah, it's almost like I've certainly have had posts or photos and stuff like that where I'm like, it just looks too polished.

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Even if it's like totally natural like what I shot up with my phone or something but something about it just like it's not it feels too polished.

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Think about this right so here's an interesting distinction. So when we talk to corporations with all due respect every corporation in America they don't understand the world of personal brand.

[00:23:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. They think it's sharing company content and I said no, no, no because if you share company content the company on average is not trusted. You the human are trusted.

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you just flip that and say here's the latest report from this bank. Here's my perspective on that. Yeah. You've now changed the whole thing as opposed to let me share what this bank said.

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_02]: No one cares. Your audience doesn't care. They care about you. So your perspective is what matters and that's what we try to teach people. It's a real subtle difference but it is not marketing.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_02]: It is about your expertise and your credibility and your willingness to give and serve and once you do that people will will come to you and want to hear more.

[00:24:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. And how do you kind of handle that last part of it? I mean, I think it's one thing to create great content put out, you know, authentic kind of points of view and things.

[00:24:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Does that just naturally like the universe, you know, brings you leads and clients then from that or is there some thing that then this feeds in terms of being able to do real kind of more focus marketing around products and services like how do you stitch this together to create a real engine.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. So the idea is of course there's nothing wrong with marketing. So let me be very clear. Marketing though is and it depends on who you are. So in your case, you are the company you are the brand so it's different for someone like you.

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you're doing lead generation and funnel marketing and all that other stuff that you're in a different animal. Most companies have the business doing their marketing. And then we're saying personal branding is going to build trust to allow when your sales folks are out there.

[00:24:57] [SPEAKER_02]: They're going to go I've heard of you and I've seen your CEO out there so that it makes marketing work better. So it allows the messaging to flow. It allows you to, you know, hire better employees because they get now get insight into the business as opposed to just a bio of a CEO, which

[00:25:13] [SPEAKER_02]: you really, you know, can't do. So what we say is there is a strategy on how you differentiate what you do with the business and what you do with yourself as the leader. And what we try to stay is just get people to want to get to know you as a human

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_02]: being with this expertise and with the mantle of leadership on your shoulders. And if it's, you know, IT security example, you might also be an IT security expert or a leadership expert or whatever. That might be your platform and your business has got nothing to do with that.

[00:25:44] [SPEAKER_02]: But people go that Richard Branson guy, I really like when he talks about, you know, branding when in fact he's running an airline is that now at the underlying thing, he's a brand guy. Yeah.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But he's but his businesses are airlines and cell phones and whatever he has right. So there's a plan to do that effectively. And that's part of the strategy that we work with clients on to get them to understand how to keep those lanes clean and where to pull them together.

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_01]: How in terms of specific techniques, I mean, you mentioned video, you mentioned, you know, some of the content posting and being authentic. What have you sort of found or what have you seen work, I guess right now, and particularly on, I guess, LinkedIn being kind of the major platform that we've been talking about

[00:26:41] [SPEAKER_01]: in a short form post, right? Like what are kind of the things that you're seeing actually great driving engagement.

[00:26:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So it kind of depends on who you are and where you are in your brand journey. So if you're just starting out, long form content doesn't matter because nobody knows who you are and they're not going to want to listen to you if they don't know who you are.

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you have a brand, then long form content that makes a lot of sense. So if Gary Vaynerchuk is an example puts out something for 30 seconds or three hours, he'll have an audience for both.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Because but he spent 20 years doing this. Yeah.

[00:27:10] [SPEAKER_02]: People for that. Oh, he's just showed up. No, no, he's been blogging for 20 years. You've been doing video for as long as videos have been around. So just understand where you are.

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_02]: So what we say is most of the folks we have have no intentionality around their personal rents. We said, let's get you built up with short form video on LinkedIn now.

[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And then as we evolve, we will add more things to your mix to be able to get to more people and to have more people want to see you in different ways.

[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_02]: So that's the kind of the starting point is do short form video. But what we also recommend is all those videos are also posted on YouTube because your LinkedIn is kind of transient, right? You missed it.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_02]: They may come back, but for the most part they're gone. Well, YouTube is your TV station. So now you've got 20 videos, 30 videos, 50 videos at the end of the year.

[00:28:01] [SPEAKER_02]: That's where we recommend, you know what maybe spend $50 boosting those videos. Why they look, they're just exposing it to more people and there's nothing worth in a YouTube channel with three views, two views and 10 views on your videos.

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. But if you have 500 or 600, which is what $500 or $50 will buy you, you've added credibility. And of course, we also recommend search engine optimization on those videos because now those videos can be found.

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_02]: So to tie it back to marketing, using my it security example. If I was on in I talked about it security and someone said, you know, why is anti virus still important? I could have that show up in Google from my YouTube channel that I was talking about that helping people understand why that's important.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_02]: That's where marketing and personal branding kind of come together. So that's how I would recommend they start and you could spend literally a million dollars a year on personal branding, if you want it to be famous.

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_01]: But nobody wants to spend a million dollars on this stuff. Yeah, I haven't found one yet. Yeah, exactly. If you're out there, we'll make sure that you have the URLs and email address is to call.

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, how do people get started? I mean, I guess give me some thoughts on if someone is kind of curious about doing this think that this might help them like where do they begin? How do they start figuring out where they should start on this?

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_02]: So the first thing I would say is, as we suggested earlier, go on LinkedIn and get comfortable with the platform and start celebrating others in your network. And when when you do that, make sure that you're adding a perspective not just saying great video, like add a perspective

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_02]: and say, I really think this is important. And it's usually seven words. The algorithm likes seven words. And if you do that, you know, 15 minutes a week for a few weeks, you'll start to see stuff that happens.

[00:29:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Think about this. So Bruce, you said something about my video today. Do I feel compelled next time you have a video to say something about yours? Of course, that's what human nature is.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So now you've now started to build and kick in those relationships that are now dormant. You're activating those. So I would start there. The second part is, go to our website and go to the Learning Center and watch the 30 videos that are there and say, All right, I'd like to learn something.

[00:30:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So let me go learn what that is and then go out there and just expose yourself to different people like a Gary Vaynerchuk or Richard Branson. See what people are doing and see what feels comfortable for you.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how you get started. And of course, there's always coaches and professionals to help you in this world. And if you're ready for that kind of help, then then engage those folks because they can cut through a lot of the clutter that you'll spend months and months trying to figure

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_02]: out because this is what they do for living. They'll help you figure out you and then you can decide on where you take that. So that's how I would start it.

[00:30:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this has been great. Alan, if people want to find out more information on you, more about the business, how they can get some help, what's the best way to get that information?

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_02]: So website strataoriginals.com or LinkedIn, Alan McLaren on LinkedIn, you can find me there and just mentioned that you heard me on the podcast so some people join in are always just trying to sell me something.

[00:31:08] [SPEAKER_02]: So I want to be careful that you know where you found me and then I'm happy to help. And there's some tools we can send you if it's helpful to you. But that would be the two starting points.

[00:31:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And Alan McLaren, sorry, Alan at strataoriginals.com is my email. Those are the ways to reach me.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Great, Alan, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time today.

[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Really enjoyed the conversation, Bruce.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: You've been listening to Scaling Up Services with business coach Bruce Eckbelt. To find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at scalingupservices.com.

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