How Do You Build a Personal Brand?

Ben (00:01.368)

Welcome back to another episode of Content Amplified. Today I'm joined by Lindsey. Lindsey, welcome to the show.

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Lindsey (00:07.525)

Thanks for having me, Ben.

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Ben (00:09.624)

Lindsey, I'm excited to talk about what we're gonna talk about today. But before we dive into the subject, maybe just let us know who you are. Tell us a little bit about what you love about marketing, a little bit about your career, just so we can kind of get to know you and set the stage for today's conversation.

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Lindsey (00:26.533)

Sure, so yeah, I'm Lindsey. I call myself a fractional content marketing consultant. So I've been freelance now for about five or six years, but obviously worked in the corporate world and worked for startups as well before that. But I've been in marketing for about 10 years. Various roles, however, have been mainly focused on content marketing over the last, I don't know.

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And I'm also a digital nomad, so I've been traveling kind of around the world these last couple of years as well. So building my business, working from anywhere, and doing all that stuff. So yeah, what I love about content marketing.

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I love to be able to authentically tell a story through different formats, whether that be for a personal brand or a company brand. I've done it for both. I've done it for my own brand. I've actually also been a ghostwriter for leaders of companies as well. So that was an interesting experience. But yeah, I love to be able to tell stories through various formats in the digital world.

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Ben (01:39.512)

I love it. I love it. And that is a perfect introduction for the subject today, building a personal brand. Now this is becoming more and more important. You know, LinkedIn is becoming more of a social network than ever before. People are promoting themselves in different ways, but really Lindsey, why should someone consider building a personal brand? And why is that important in today's market for someone to have a personal brand?

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Lindsey (02:08.197)

Yeah, so I would just first start off by saying, you know, things are getting so competitive, whether you're a freelancer or an in -house marketer.

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As we all know, the way things are going with the economy and just speaking from my perspective as a freelancer, there's been a lot since the pandemic, a lot of people not just going in one direction, some people actually have full -time roles and they want to explore a side hustle or just to be able to expand their skill set and have that as an additional stream of income. That's been a huge thing for me as well, just exploring different avenues of

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of income. So I would say your personal brand is really how you can set yourself up as unique. Like it's your kind of key differentiation in my opinion, where by, you know,

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You don't just have a bare profile on LinkedIn or you're just kind of operating with a resume and that's it. People want to be able to kind of look you up and you want to make it as easy as possible. So one of the questions I like to, a curious question that I like to ask people is like, when you Google your name, what comes up?

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You know, have you done that? Have you ever done that? Like I do it every once in a while, but I'm also intentionally building my brand. So I kind of know what's out there, you know, whether it's guest posting, on other blogs or being on a podcast such as this one. I've done a couple of podcast interviews now over the last couple of years, and this is all just kind of like what I say, one drop in the bucket of building your brand and like creating this kind of online presence for yourself so that people have.

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Lindsey (03:55.671)

a good impression of you.

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Ben (03:58.52)

I love that. I love that. So when you're looking at developing a personal brand, you know, you're really bought into this concept, you know, you need to do it. How do you like understand and figure out your own personal view or what you're going to do that makes you different and original and uniquely you like how how do you go about discovering that and learning that about yourself?

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Lindsey (04:25.445)

Yeah, you know, it's definitely a journey. It was a journey for me as well. Like, I see it a lot of, you know...

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A lot of people, I'm mostly the most engaged on LinkedIn. I have the other platforms, but when it comes to business stuff, obviously most people gravitate to LinkedIn. People have different opinions about it, but I feel like it's definitely changed over the years and there's a lot more younger people on there. I always say I go where my clients are and I feel like my potential clients are all there for the most part.

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And so, I'm sorry, what was the question again? How to build your personal brand? Is that the question?

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Ben (05:08.92)

Yeah, like how do you find the unique you? You know, like a lot of times online, you know, we think about just copying others, but how do you find your own voice?

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Lindsey (05:12.737)

Yeah.

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Lindsey (05:17.829)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm talking about my journey. Yeah, trying to get back into the right frame of mind here. So, okay. Yeah, so when I first started out, that was my mistake. It was not necessarily a mistake. Like we all go through this journey of like, okay, I'm going to consume as much as possible. I'm going to look at what everybody else out there is doing and not necessarily copy, but it's like, I just didn't have faith in myself that I had good ideas or...

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you know, that I had enough of my own experience or things to share. And so this is why I say that it's a journey because you might have to do that in the beginning. You might really want to immerse yourself. And, you know, I wouldn't say just go consuming willy -nilly, but like find other people in your industry that maybe are successful in your eyes. Like don't just go chasing vanity metrics. Like, looking for the people that hundreds of thousands of followers. That's not how I go about it.

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I go about it, like I put myself almost in the shoes of a consumer and I do this with my clients as well as like put yourself in the shoes of someone consuming that content or reading that story. How is it making you feel? Like does it, does it, you know, does it feel compelling? Does it feel engaging? And then like.

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Try it on for size, I guess you could say, or filter it through your own lens. And also, don't just consume the content and try to emulate that, but look at the ideas and the strategies that you're using and see if any of those resonate with you. I would say that's one thing you could do.

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But for me, it really was trial and error. It was like all these different kind of things, like trial and error in the beginning, consuming what other people are doing. But then after like about a year of that, I was like, okay, information overload. And for me, it was like a year or two after the pandemic, I launched my business in 2018. And that's when I kind of started building my personal brand at the same time. And,

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Lindsey (07:17.605)

Yeah, so after about a year, I had information overload and I was just like, okay, no, I need to go into my own kind of creative space, you know, whether that's daily, weekly. And now my process kind of looks like, you know, I will get an idea that I'll kind of want to run with.

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Or if I'm not sitting down at my desk, I have a running notes tab in my phone. And I'm like, that would be a great content idea. Let me just jot that down. And so I always have some running notes tabs, whether it's in Google Doc or on my phone. And then when I am ready to sit down and start creating content for me, for my personal brand, I go back into those notes and it kind of re -sparks that inspiration for me.

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But yeah, just looking for like being open for that inspiration as well, whether it comes from another person or yourself. And then also stories, you know, like your own stories, your own personal journey stories. What are things you've been through that that you learned something from like?

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When I first started building my brand online, a lot of what I wrote was stories of like, this was a challenge that I was faced with, this is how I overcame it, this is what I learned from it. Because I think a lot of people get stuck on, well, I have to be a teacher. You know, I have to show up and teach my knowledge. And that is a part of it, but it doesn't have to be, it shouldn't be the only thing because you wanna take people on this journey with you. Like, look at your personal brand as the journey of you.

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when it comes to personal growth and because a lot of people have that question too of like well how much do I share? I don't want to get too personal. I don't want to share so much about my life and I'm like no it's not necessarily that you have to do that. I kind of frame it in the lens of you know since I'm building a business there's you know there's obviously like a lot of things that come up around that like on my journey of personal growth, personal development.

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Lindsey (09:20.229)

So for someone that might be like in house, you know, maybe the journey of, you know, they're like looking to climb the ranks in the company. Maybe one day they see themselves like higher up in a higher up position. Maybe you can tell the story of like how you're going from entry level to that role. it's just an example. So.

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Ben (09:59.32)

Alright, we disconnected. I think she'll join again. Sorry about the amount of edits that are going to have to happen in this episode.

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Lindsey (10:40.366)

back.

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Ben (10:43.096)

There you are, sounds good. Well, it's still recording, so it's still all synced up and good to go. So you're good to go.

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Lindsey (10:47.15)

Yeah, I finished my thought and then waited for me to be able to refresh it.

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Ben (10:56.888)

Okay, great, perfect. All right, well, I'll just continue the conversation from here. I love how you talked about you don't have to always be teaching something. I think sometimes we often feel like we have to be obligated to teach some kind of a lesson, but I love how you're talking about bringing them on like your journey with you. And so I look at like your own personal journey with you being like a digital nomad, like you said.

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And how cool your content must be to say, this is why I'm really a creative person for the businesses I work with. Kind of taking that journey and the unique perspective of saying, I have a fresh outlook on everything I do because of this and that or whatever it may be. So how can you turn your journey into an advantage? What can you do when you're building a personal brand that will attract the kinds of businesses you want to work with?

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or the kind of roles that you want to have or get hired for. How can you leverage that to kind of position yourself for the next step and for where you would like to go with your brand and your career?

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Lindsey (12:07.726)

Yeah, so I guess like in a simple answer that obviously we can expand on is, you know, just ensuring that everything that you share, I hate to sound cliche, like I was gonna say everything you share has value, but in some ways you kind of do, like a value for different reasons, you know? Like when you're sharing out like a personal -ish story.

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Like that's like, you're almost kind of, you're sharing your authenticity. You're sharing more about who you are as a human, you know? And then in another like post, let's say, you are sharing your knowledge because you want to kind of, if you want to position yourself as authoritative or maybe just knowledgeable in your industry, like you want to kind of showcase your knowledge and your skills in that way.

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But I would say to kind of showcase your uniqueness, you do want to come up with different perspectives, different point of views. I mean, this is kind of like thought leadership, which is what I help a lot of my clients with. And I kind of also consider myself a thought leader in different ways. And some people cringe at that now too, but it is what it is, for lack of a better word.

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But yeah, I mean, that is how you're gonna stand out. You have your own unique stories, you have your own unique perspectives, and maybe you have your own unique way of doing things. Like that's kind of what I also focus on as well as a freelance consultant is, you know, sharing what my unique processes are, sharing, like you were saying earlier, like the...

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The pressure of showing up to teach, it's not necessarily that you're showing up to teach, you're sharing what you're learning. So that little bit of a different kind of perspective vantage point there, like you're going through your own process and you're sharing what you're learning in that process, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're putting yourself on a pedestal. Because that's another big thing that comes across when I work with even people in established...

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Lindsey (14:26.638)

higher positions sometimes even, not even just people in, you know, like around my age or, you know, people that are still lower in their journey, let's say, is that they don't want to give off the impression that they are some, you know, big shot influencer online or something like that. So, to that I say it's just about, you know, emotionally connecting. Like, it's, for me it was a process.

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for my own personal growth as well to put myself out there, to technically like the public online, that helped me move and traverse through my getting out of my comfort zones and making myself a little bit more uncomfortable and being able to have the confidence to show up on a podcast interview like this, or I did a couple like virtual kind of panel style.

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conferences, I forget what you call them, but yeah, like some kind of conferences, but they were digital. And I've always had like a huge fear of public speaking. Like I still think I'd be very nervous to stand on a stage and talk in front of live people. But even when I first started out building my brand and putting myself out there and even getting on video, like now I'm posting videos on LinkedIn. I just started that as kind of a creative project for myself this year.

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But prior to that, I was like, for many, you know, for several years, I was too nervous to do that. so I feel like the great thing about it is it's not just about like getting a client or getting a job. It's you're building up your own skills, your speaking skills, your presentation skills, your confidence. Like there's just so many, advantages to doing this. yeah.

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But like there's no hard and fast rule, you know, like sure, I could have, you know, started going on podcasts or, you know, speaking in front of people online, like in the beginning, but I wasn't ready for that. But after like dipping my toes in different areas and consistently showing up, you know, of course there were times where maybe I, for a month, I didn't post anything online. I had my peaks and valleys as well, but.

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Lindsey (16:50.35)

And I would get on myself about that. I would get upset with myself about it. Like, I'm not doing what I said I would be doing. Like, I'm not showing up often enough. And I'm like, in retrospect, I'm like, no, I probably just needed a break, especially after the pandemic year. Like, I took that year to really like just put my head down and focus on my business and doing a lot of these things that we're talking about. But after that year, well, after that year was when I decided I was going to start traveling.

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and I took a little bit of a step back. I was like, my brain is like fried from this past year. So I think why I'm bringing this up because everyone's journey will look different and you can always come back to the drawing board. You can always evolve and pivot. You're not stuck in, you know, there's this whole thing around like building your brand identity, but like what I realized in that process is like,

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It's an evolving process. Just as we evolve as humans, our brand is going to evolve with us. As long as we continue to show up authentically and we're projecting an image of ourselves that's authentic, then I think that we're on the right path. Yeah.

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Ben (18:02.52)

I love that. I love that. I think that is a great way to end it. I think really the ability to find your authentic self, put yourself out there, find circumstances where maybe you're not comfortable and really see what it means to you and not being concerned about everything sticking, giving yourself kind of the freedom to fail. And it's not failure. It's really just discovery. And I think there's a lot of value in that. Yeah, exactly. Experimenting.

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Lindsey (18:26.414)

Exactly. It's experiment. Experimenting, is what I like to call it.

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Ben (18:32.664)

I love it. I love it. Well, Lindsey, this has been super helpful. If anyone wants to connect with you and continue the conversation, how can they reach out and find you?

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Lindsey (18:41.838)

Yeah, LinkedIn would be the easiest place to find me. So you can include my info there.

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Ben (18:47.096)

Perfect, love it. Yeah, we'll include your profile in the show notes and link to it and everything. Again, Lindsey, thank you so much for taking the time today. Really appreciate it.

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Lindsey (18:57.902)

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

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