So welcome. I thought I'd start with a quote today. People don't buy what you do, they buy, why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. This is a Simon Cyne quote and this fundamentally comes from why do you do something?And I think it matters because your personal brand, your authentic personal brand, you know, this is key to it. You can put something out there but not feel like it's being you perhaps in your corporate job or in your day job. Now you're holding back some of who you are and this kind of doesn't feel authentic to you. And there's a lot of uh of, of stuff here about being authentic and being genuine. So let's talk all about how to grow your authentic confident killer personal brand. That's what we're doing here and I'm sue Parker. So a little bit about me. I am a mum of two. I'm a data leader. I'm an entrepreneur and podcaster. I specialize in helping women to unleash your personal power so that you can create a life that you love and do work that feels purposeful. That means you earn more and that's more flexible for you. So I'm helping a lot of work a lot of women these days with creating their personal brands so that they can start to build their freelance careers, their businesses or create more opportunities in their careers for them. So that's a little bit about me.

My career journey is I spent many years working long hours spinning lots of plates trying to prove myself earning more qualifications. And then I eventually got to my dream job. I realized the thing I was envisaging that there's flexibility, there's freedom, there's creativity, there's time, it doesn't happen there when you're in leadership. I actually felt I had less time than before. I hardly saw my kids. I felt stressed and I was thinking all of these people I'm seeing out there. What are they doing differently? That means that they're, they're getting more opportunities, they are earning money that I couldn't even dream of. They were doing creative and strategic work, really fun looking work and they, and they seem to be loving it. They had everything I wanted and the difference I noticed was their personal brand. They knew how to market themselves. And unlike me, who was constantly posting about my company, I would, I would be an advocate for my company but never for myself. And this is somebody put a comment here about brands not being about companies and brands. It's more about people, it's more about who you are and that's what I want to talk about with you today is how do you build that personal brand? And I think the best way of talking about it to you is through two examples.

And I was definitely in the lola bucket and this will resonate with you so much lola. She works hard. She does long hours, she does everything that she's asked. She's works towards lots of extra qualifications all the time. She gets a standard 2% pay rise every year and every time she's looking for a new job or a new opportunity, she's up against hundreds of other candidates and quite often just, just in the pot with everybody else. And then I want to talk to you about Gabrielle. So Gabrielle's one of those people that we see popping up all over, all over the place, all of the time that you think. Wow, they seem to have. It made Gabrielle she works hard, but she shares her, her learning and her discovery all over posts and articles and blogs. She, every pro problem that she tackles, she puts out there for everybody else. She does extra sessions at work. She speaks at meet ups and events like this. You've probably seen some of these people today or been one of these people today. So thumbs up to you, her colleagues, her manager, they all recognize her expertise and they receive a bonus. She, she gets a bonus because of that, an extra 10% bonus over and above Lola, she builds lots of connections through this work that she's doing. And the fact that she's putting this out there.

And consequently, when she wants a new job, one of her connections in her network has one. And before long, she's got a new role, she earns 20% more than Lola already. And this is actually a true story of somebody I know here um who appears on the podcast with the same ease, the same process and continuation of this building of the network and putting content and becoming an expert out there. Gabrielle goes on to work freelance three days a week traveling the world and she now earns twice as much, much as she does in her corporate and she did even in her corporate career. Now, I don't know about you. But do you wanna be a Lola for the rest of your career or do you wanna be a Gabrielle? And what is the difference here? And I'm hoping that it's really obvious for you to see with these two examples. So I'm gonna walk you through a personal branding road map and you have to do them in order because they kind of only work that way. And I'm gonna start with your mission and your message. And these are your five steps that you're gonna go through in the phases when you're building your personal brand, your credibility. But you're probably already thinking the same as I did when I got started. Am I good enough?

I'm looking at all these posts online or I'm looking at these people speaking today and I'm thinking, I'm no good. I don't know all of this stuff. Who am I to speak out? Well, I absolutely love this quote by Daniel. Daniel Priestley. It's a really good reminder of who you are, your experiences and what you have to offer the world. You're already standing on a mountain of value in your story. Your experience is unique and you are highly valuable just as you are. Nobody's perfect. We know that we've got to get started. But unlike what we think, we don't know anything. Everybody else knows more than me. Who am I to be the expert? You have more than the average person's knowledge in your area of expertise. That's a fact. There are people around you in your social circles in your family who do not know the things you know about your subject areas and those if you're passionate about those are the ones that you should be writing about because that's where your story is. That's where your experience is. So I don't just want you to think, I wish to have a personal brand. I wish to do what Gabrielle does and have those opportunities come to me like I did. I don't want you to just hope of it, dream of it, think about it, journal it, I want you to do it to take some action.

So let's start with the first step in the personal branding road map and this is where you get to figure out what it is. You're gonna start to put out there. What do you want to be known for as the expert when you're branding yourself, what do you want people to think of you when they think of your name? So I want, I want you to be aware that passion will outweigh everything else. So if like many people, your parents or teacher said you're really good at maths, why don't you become an accountant or a statistician? But you hated that and you did it anyway, you'll know that you didn't want to put the extra work in. You didn't go the extra mile, your heart wasn't in it and you hate it. But if you're somebody who followed the thing that they love or you're now pursuing your passion perhaps in technology or something else, then that's the thing that's gonna keep you going when you're not earning any money from it. It's something you're doing in your spare time.

And you've got to find that intrinsic motivation. If you've read any of Simon Sin's books, you'll know about the why the why being in the middle, why do you do something is fundamental? Not the what and the how that kind of comes after? But why do you do it? Why is it important to you? That passion will outweigh everything else and keep you going. And it will also outperform anybody who's in this simply so that they can make money. You will beat them every time because your passion will shine. And then the second piece of advice in the mission and the message is about micro Niching. It's no longer just about Niching. And any marketer will tell you if you speak to everyone. If you're a generalist, you speak to nobody. You're known for not one particular thing, you're a bit random. So if you ever feel like you put posts out there or, you know, people who do and they feel a little bit random, that's probably because they don't know what their niche is either. They haven't got clarity over it. Sometimes this comes with putting stuff out there and exploring and learning, you figure out what you're into. So what is a micro niche? Well, it's not leadership coaching anymore. It's not being an expert in security anymore. It's even more niche than that.

You might be a cybersecurity expert in ecommerce sites. You might be somebody who is a leadership coach for females who work specifically in data analyst roles. But that's a micro niche. That's where you go a level down. You create your own sector, your own category. If you like that, you get known for specifically and don't worry, you can always broaden a lot later when you want to figure out what else you want to do. So we know our niche. We, we know our passion. We've probably journaled about it. We've got loads of ideas. We're thinking, yeah, we're maybe even consuming lots of content. But this is nothing to create your credibility without putting your content out there. And this is probably the bit that we procrastinate. And we, we, yeah, we procrastinate over the most because we tell ourselves we're not good enough. We're too busy consuming everybody else's content and thinking, who am I to put this out here? So, content, where do you start? I want you to list out and I have a workbook at the end that you can download on this 3 to 4 content pillars. This is will stop you from being random, it will stop you from posting about absolutely anything at all and it will keep you on your micro niche.

So when you do your three or four content pillars, every time you, you've come up with an idea, cross check it against your content pillars. Does it fit within the type of thing I would like to be known for, I read an article and it felt felt like the right thing to do at the time. And then the other thing is getting onto one social media platform and doing it really well instead of spreading yourself thin, trying to be in all places but not really particularly engaging in any one particular place. You're better off doing one thing super well. Now the perfect personal branding mix is a combination of content creation so that you become the author, the credibility. Um You get that reputation, you get known for that, you become the expert in your field. It'll also help you to get clarity, it will help you to research something so that you become even more of an expert in that area and do this consistently and authentically. Now, here's the thing. If you see somebody show up in your feed once every few months, you forget what they posted about last time. I don't know you as an expert in something because it's so long since you last posted, what did you post about again?

And you're not getting front of mind and then you're not really building a relationship or a authenticity with that person. They don't really know who you are. They, they're just not really engaged with you. If you post 345 times a week on your social media platforms or perhaps even blog once a week or do a podcast or something like that, then what you're doing is you're getting into a rhythm, you're consistent. People know you're gonna show up, they know what you're gonna talk about. They know if they're interested in it that week or not. Maybe when I do need, have a need for that and this is future employers as well, then I'll tune in and check that out. I didn't know you did that, but I've seen it so often. Now one day I am actually gonna tune, tune in and have a listen. You show up and you start to build authenticity. You build your personal voice, the more you put it out there, the more comfortable you get with losing the professionalism, which so many of us are tied to and starting to speak like you speak. And then the other one is about networking. So it's not just putting content out there and we'll come back to this one a lot more, but it's about engaging with people listening to people's comments and, and really engaging in that conversation.

Now, I know a lot of people will be thinking of this knowing they should do it but not doing it. I want you to know that you have that personal power despite all of the blockers, whether it's time, whether it's money, whether it's kids, whatever your excuse spot is, use your personal power to improve your life. And in turn by doing that by sharing all this stuff, you're actually improving the world. So you're having a bigger impact by spreading your message, your knowledge around the world. Now, let's have a little talk about the journey of your community of your tribe. So I want you to think of somebody seeing your content, then they click on your profile, then they click like or hit follow whatever they do or they click your call to action, which might be hey, sign up for my newsletter or hey, listen to my podcast and then reach out to me and become a guest or something and that's the journey they're gonna go on and then you're gonna engage with them, you're gonna have a conversation with them.

We can do this at this stage. We yeah, it's building or giving back to your community. So it's nurturing, it's building trust, it's getting known for something. So you need a P profile, right? So one of the workplaces that is fantastic for building a personal profile is linked in why? Because it's got more consumers than creators than any other social media platform. The only exception to that is tiktok at the moment, it's a professionally trusted community building site.

It ranks really well on Google. If you ever try Googling somebody's name, you'll notice their linkedin profile always comes up really high and so does their articles and it has a fantastic powerful profile section. Where else can you do featured content and a big long bio and, and include history and experience and all sorts of other bits of information that you'd like and little video clips and various other links to your website or whatever else you're doing. So if you'd like a bit more about the perfect profile for linkedin, I have a checklist that's going into the workbook that goes with this session which you can catch at the end. So once we have our profile, we have our network building. So so put in there in the chat, that community really matters, building these people. So a personal brand, you know, 90% of what you're doing is so that you have this network, you have this community of people around you. It's all about driving that traffic to you to notice you, to know I can trust you and so that you can have the opportunities that Gabrielle at the very beginning of this can have. So to do this, you need to have engaging in other posts. You know, if somebody else is posting something in your field and they're engaging with yours or you know, you can just engage in theirs, you can just like it, comment on constructive comments, something that adds value to their piece because then other people are interested in the same topics are seeing you as well in the same scene, always respond to comments on your post.

Don't be that rude person, but also this will boost the algorithm. It will boost your post cos it says, hey, there's engagement over here. We like this post. Let's show it again on lots of people's feeds. Maybe they wanna comment as well. We wanna answer all direct messages and we can do this when we're, when we're small. When we don't have hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of followers, you can answer all direct messages that come to your inbox and that's an opportunity to build a relationship you can listen and learn to what people are saying and that can inform ideas that you have.

Maybe you get ideas about what kind of things other people are struggling with. And when I say contact everyone, I mean, when somebody likes your post, what I found was really useful is it just putting a reach out there that says, hey, thanks for liking my posts, even if you know, I spoke to you about a year ago or maybe I've never spoken to you, but you like my post.

Thanks for liking my posts. It's really interesting and maybe you engage in a conversation. I found many of those have turned into podcast guests or have turned into just people I like to catch up with every now and then because we have things in common. So network building, putting the time in to nurture your network is incredibly important. We talk about having coffees and all sorts of other things as well. Then the final step in the personal branding journey is you've done all this, all this upfront work and you're thinking I'm doing all this for free. You know, where's the, where's the getting into things? Where's the um payback for it? When do I get Gabrielle's job opportunities, her freelance opportunities or her, her bonus and her new role? Well, this is where you start to think about what is the service I'm gonna offer at the end? What is the service I want to be pitching for when I'm known as the expert, what is the type of creative or strategic work that I would like to be involved in that? I'm trying to be expert known for. I'm gonna give you a little business example here because I think you can apply it contextually to, to any one of our lives that we're creating here. And that is Google, you know, Google started out for free. They s you know, they let us search for free.

Now they let us do all sorts of functional functionality. Businesses have gmail, you can have gmail, you can have Google analytics, you know, businesses can do a lot of keyword research all for free initially. And what they were doing is spreading ideas, they were spreading their idea, their vision of how the web should be used and web authoring. So they were doing this and they built this up so that they could then start to figure out how to monetize it in effect. Everything that you have been doing here has been building up to create this content to create your profile so that you can share information for free. You become known as the expert, you add value for free. Maybe you've got user guides, templates, you're gonna share, you've got articles tips. It's not just about saying, well, I'm only gonna do this. If a company pays me, it's or I'm only gonna do that. If somebody pays me to coach them about it. You're, you're giving a lot of this information for free because do you know what a lot of it's already available for free? Anyone can go to Google and Google a lot of this. It's not really the information anymore that's so valuable, but it's thinking about how you can help people with the implementation of these ideas.

So I want you to think about an ecosystem, an ecosystem where you give value, you give information and expertise, you get known for that and you have an ecosystem. That then means when people need you to help implement a project, to build my website, to design my website, to help me with this project. That's AC RM system that we're trying to roll out and you've written about it 1000 times, but my team just can't seem to get it right. I need you on my team. You're the expert, that's when you can do the paid service. That's when you get the unique opportunities. That's when you, you get to use your personal brand to earn more and do what you love and think about. Yeah, it's helping with the implementation. I would always say with this section is always think about it's more than just the day job. It's actually what else can I get involved in? I'm passionate about that will have a payoff. I know people who've written books and then given the book away because they've directed people to their courses or their programs or, or things like that.

I know people, people who have given speaking talks for free on the proviso that some of those people that go to my free talks will come and buy something from me or will en engage with me to get to give me an opportunity or a partnership or something like that. So there are so many opportunities that we need to tap into and remember the little quote at the side, you only fail when you stop trying and that's so true, isn't it? Ok. So final slide and we're nearly out of time free resources. You can get a copy of this presentation and the personal branding workbook that I mentioned, including content planner, linkedin, checklist, various other things and hopefully a lot of motivational talk in there to really kick start building building your personal brand and you can grab that using the QR code there.

Um And I will just jump over to the chat and have a look if there's any questions for me. So I went backwards. Yeah, some really great comments. Actually a um personal branding is very subjective or personal to the person or individual. Hence, it must be done in an organic manner. Credibility of a brand is equally important. Yeah, completely. Oh Thank you very much for your kind comments. I did. Ah so somebody asked about two profiles. That was an interesting one. Yeah. Um and I, yeah, there was ok would you advise having two profiles if you have an interest in something and some are very professional to orientated and some are not Victoria. That's a really interesting question. Um You'll find a lot of advice about that. Um It's very controversial.

If you have a day job, you have a professional career who is not supportive of side hustles or not supportive of or not. What should we say if there's a conflict of interest with the type of work that you want to do on the other side of things? Um Then some people say yes to two profiles. Um In my experience, the your network is king and your network is out there and they're probably part of your main profile and actually transitioning and starting to drip feed information is, is, is still really great if it's specifically linkedin is your issue because you have a professional brand and then you want to put something out there that's very different.

I did hear a fantastic Gary V podcast on this one where a lady who worked at Tesla wanted to put something out there, but something she wanted to do as a side hustle, but it was categorically a no from Tesla, you cannot post anything out there. You know, it will reflect on the company that sort of line and his advice was go over to tiktok, go all in on tiktok with sharing about your personal brand, your story, the things you want to share the information and just go all in without the worry of what your other business is or what your employer might think or anything like that and just keep Tesla as the professional brand that you're, you're employed by over on linkedin.

I thought that was really sound advice actually because what it's saying is linkedin isn't the be all and end all. We talk about it a lot. It does have many pros. But you're right, tiktok is another area where there are lots more consumers at the moment than there are creators and that will change. But I also know even in this saturated market, people who are doing roaring trades over on Instagram, people who are really building their networks still on Facebook. So I I'm sure there are examples of everything the point is, choose one platform and go all in and go really well trying to look for any more questions. Uh We're out of time, but I will just have a little scar on there. Um And you can always catch the um presentation and my email address as well is also on the website. So thank you so much folks for joining me today. I hope that you have a fantastic rest of the women in tech network and I will jump off and let the next speaker come around. Thank you. Bye bye.