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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
Meet the Woman Who Solved Personal Branding (Yota Trom interview)
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🔗 Have Yota help you build the best personal brand: yotatrom.com
Your personal brand is either working for you or against you.
In this conversation with Yota Trom (who's worked with top CEOs), we uncover why many course creators hit income plateaus despite solid marketing.
Discover how to turn your unique strengths into your biggest business advantage and attract perfect-fit clients who happily pay premium prices. If you're tired of chasing every new tactic while others seem to attract success effortlessly, this might be the missing piece.
We all have a personal brand, whether we want it or not. The moment you enter in a room, people create a perception about who you are, what you stand for, right. So the personal brand exists. That's not debatable here. The difference here is do we control the narrative or we just allow other people to control the narrative about who we are?
Speaker 2:So you said something to me before once that I think is super interesting about how most people who haven't thought about personal branding they still have a personal brand. It's just a shit one. Yota Trom is on a mission to transform how leaders see themselves turning self-doubt into unstoppable confidence.
Speaker 1:People can understand when someone is real or when it's fake. It's pretty easy actually to figure out when someone is pretending and they do not really own the things that they are talking about or they are not passionate enough. When you know what you're good at and how to leverage all your strengths and all your talents, then basically you're removing all the obstacles that you are setting to yourself and you can really allow your business to grow to the maximum.
Speaker 2:If you're ready to stop thinking small, understand just how great you really are, show that to the world, and she's here to help you do that. Hello and welcome to the art of Courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. Today, we're going to talk about how your personal brand is killing your business, why business owners should care about their personal brand and how to build a personal brand in 2025. Jota, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Hi John, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:So why does personal branding matter to you?
Speaker 1:I would like to start with a personal story, because that is what actually led me to being so passionate about personal branding. So when I was at school, all the way from primary school until 16, 17 years old, I was pretty much invisible. I wasn't a cool kid. I was not the good looking kid. I was not the charismatic kid. I was not the good looking kid. I was not the charismatic kid. I was spending most of my breaks during school in class, because I didn't have a lot of friends. So I was the exact opposite of what a popular kid would be.
Speaker 1:And as I started growing up, I worked a lot on my confidence. I worked on my appearance, the way I looked, confidence. I worked on my appearance, the way I looked, and what I realized is that suddenly I started being more popular. More people want to be my friends, they would invite me more parties and social activities and all of that. And the truth is that fundamentally, nothing has really changed. I was still the same person that I was before, but what had really changed was what I was projecting outside. So all the things my character traits, my personality they have always been there, but I just have never been showing that to other people, so people didn't know who I was. I was really sly, really introverted. So over the last 20 years, I worked a lot on my personal brand, sometimes intentionally. In the beginning maybe not so intentionally, but especially when I left the corporate world to build my own business, I realized that I needed to do something. People needed to know who I am, what I do, otherwise my business would fail, I wouldn't have clients and all of that. So I started being more intentional about who I was. How do I want my clients to feel? What is the impact that I want to have? And through my own journey, I started to learn a lot more about personal branding, about strength-based coaching. So I did studies on positive psychology and coaching psychology. So I started implementing all this theoretical knowledge that I had from the university and through life actually into my own personal brand in order to start creating a business that really represented who I am.
Speaker 1:To be honest, when I first started, it wasn't like that.
Speaker 1:I was a leadership coach, so what I thought is that I should be in a shoot, I should be really serious, which is, as you can see, probably not how I am and the problem was that I was doing all the right things, but I didn't have any clients in the beginning, and when I started bringing more of myself into my business, being more outgoing, more smiley, more friendly which is not very, very common within corporate settings actually, that is when the right clients started coming to me and wanted to work with me, and the main thing that led to that was actually that I was myself, I was enjoying what I do, I was authentic and people would feel that, so they would naturally want to work with me, collaborate with me, and that's how I ended up doing personal branding as part of as a core part of my work actually, so it sounds like you were one of those teen movies where there's the ugly kid who's not really ugly, but everyone thinks she's ugly because she's wearing glasses and has bad hair, and then one day she gets a makeover and everyone's like oh my God, you're so beautiful.
Speaker 2:So that was you were. You were in one of those.
Speaker 1:That was exactly me, and I don't want to stay only on the appearance and the way I looked, but for me it was also the personality. So I think, because I didn't have the confidence, I just wouldn't go and talk to people. I wasn't. I was so shy to even just say hi to people that I knew for quite a few years. So it was not just the appearance, but also what I was communicating to them and how open I was towards them.
Speaker 1:And, of course, all of this was subconscious, right, I didn't know anything about personal branding back then. So for me there was a question mark about why people don't want to hang out with me. And then later, when I went into entrepreneurship, I had the exact same question, which was why people don't want to work with me. I knew I was really good, I did a whole master's thesis, all of this stuff, but still I didn't have clients.
Speaker 1:So in both scenarios even when I was younger, but even now, like growing and building the business the thing I realized was that it's all about the perception that people have of you and the perception we built it really within a few. Perception that people have of you and the perception we build it really within a few seconds that we see someone, we immediately form an opinion about whether we like them, how they are. Do we want to hang out with them? Do we want to get to know them better? So what personal branding is doing is actually help you save that perception, in order to be accurate, a real representation of who you are, rather than just letting people think whatever they want about you.
Speaker 2:Today, I want to focus more on the business side. Why should entrepreneurs, business owners, course creators, why should they care about building a personal brand?
Speaker 1:So for me, first of all, what we see out there is that a lot of people are just copying other people. But what personal branding can do is help you realize why you're unique, what makes you stand out, and then, instead of you copying others, then other people will want to copy you. And the other reason is also about authenticity, right? So when we build a strong personal brand, then we are perceived as experts on our fields, and that can give us a lot of possibilities from increasing our rates, from attracting the right clients and all of that. But for me, having that position as an expert in your market, in what you do, is really it's giving you power in your hands that you can then use with many different ways.
Speaker 1:Another thing that I've seen a lot through my work and probably it wasn't the first thing that I would think of is also confidence.
Speaker 1:So I really believe that personal branding is the best boost in your confidence that you can get, because you will have to ask all the questions about why you are great, what are your strengths, what are your talents, and then how do we communicate all these things. So through the journey of actually building the personal brand, you realize why you're amazing, but also you realize how to communicate that to other people. Another thing that I want to add is that most people, when they think about personal branding, they see it as another marketing strategy, but that's not the way I see what personal branding is. So for me, this is a way to unlock people's potential, because when you know what you're good at and how to leverage all your strengths and all your talents, then basically you are removing all the obstacles, all the limiting beliefs, all the barriers that you are setting to yourself and you can really allow your business to grow to the maximum so that all sounds fantastic.
Speaker 2:yes, and that sounds like it's got a lot of potential, but it's at the kind of more conceptual level. How does that like transfer into more concrete business value?
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a great question. So, first of all, personal brand can be your compass, the way that you're making decisions throughout your business, because once you know what are your values, what is it that you want to offer to your clients, what do you want people to feel when they work with you, when they collaborate with you? Then it's really easy to filter things that are coming towards you and whether you want to do them or not, because if they're not aligned with what you want to create, then the decision is really simple. Then the next thing is also about attracting the right people. So a lot of us we're creating businesses and we end up serving customers that we don't really love working with. But when your brand is really clear, it will attract the right people, and that is something I have seen so much through my business.
Speaker 1:Most of my business so far has been built on referrals and I really didn't need to do any marketing and sales. I didn't know how to do any of these things. My corporate background was I was working in tech. I was a software engineer before, so my corporate background was I was working in tech, I was a software engineer before, so I didn't have a clue about all of these things. So the only thing that I became an expert at was personal branding. So my personal branding became a magnet, basically for the right people to work with me, because the way I show up, the way I talk, the experience that people have when they're around me, it will filter the people that also will want to work with me, and that's exactly why I absolutely love my clients. Every single one of them is someone that I absolutely love to work with. And even when I go into a sales call when people reach out to me because I usually, as I said, I don't a sales call when people reach out to me because I usually, as I said, I don't do sales, I don't do marketing, I just have people landing in my inbox through other clients, but the moment that I have a call with them, actually these people are the right people to work with. I don't spend almost any time with people who are talking to people who are not my ideal clients, and I feel the reason that this is happening is because my personal brand is so clear that it immediately excludes people who will want a coach who is way more serious and way more corporate and all of these things.
Speaker 1:And, as you mentioned earlier on, I have worked a lot with executives and senior leaders from some very, very well-known companies around the world, and the number one reason that companies are investing in the personal brands of CEOs and very senior executives is because they understand how much power that has, and one of the main things that we see is attracting top talent.
Speaker 1:So when we are working with a senior executive on their personal brand, the reason is because these people are actually ambassadors of the companies that they're working at, so they are demonstrating what is the culture, what's the culture, so their culture, the ways of working and all of that and, as a consequence, they will attract people who want to work with a specific leader. If we take that now into entrepreneurship, as we're growing our businesses and scaling and we want to hire the best people, I think personal branding can also act as a way to attract people who will absolutely love to work with you because they align, your values, are aligned, they want to learn from you, as we said earlier on, they can see you as an expert in your field, so they want to learn and all of these things. So, again, personal branding is not only about scaling the business and making more money, but it's also about scaling a team and attracting a team that you really like to work with okay, so we've got it.
Speaker 2:reduces decision fatigue because you kind of know more who it is, that, what it is, that you should be going after, what kind of things you should be doing, what kind of things you shouldn't be doing. It helps you to attract the right talent, so bring people in. It helps you attract the right kind of customers and clients. Anything else in terms of benefits from it.
Speaker 1:Of course it also has financial benefits because the products that you will be creating, they will have way more leads, people will want to buy them. But also it's giving you a lot of new options around what you can do with the business. So, for example, I have reached the stage where I have kind of maxed out my capacity of working one-to-one with people, so I've decided to pivot a little bit the business and start creating. My voice went, so I decided to business and start creating courses and the moment I put it out there that I will be creating courses or coaching programs for bigger groups, I got so many invitations to speak in podcasts, to go into conferences, and the reason I got all this I didn't actually do any outreach to people. I was just sharing what would my next steps be and people were inviting me.
Speaker 1:And the main reason that this is happening is because of my personal brand. I have actually even been invited to do a TEDx, which will be happening probably next year, and again, all that came through my personal branding, without me having to do outreach or trying to create these opportunities. So I think, from that perspective, having a strong personal brand can really help you first of all. Expand your business in ways that maybe you haven't thought that would be possible. Do it way more quickly, way more easily, with way less cost, but also open up new opportunities that you might haven't thought of exploring, just because these opportunities will be coming your way.
Speaker 2:So you've talked quite a lot there about like how you've used personal branding to like help you and grow your business. What about some of your clients? What are some of the benefits that you've seen there after you've helped them with it?
Speaker 1:I will use an example, maybe from the corporate world, because I think through doing that with so many senior executives from very, very well-known companies, as I said earlier, that gave me an insider's view of what works for those very senior people. We've tested a lot of things. We even had strong brands backing us up while we were building their own personal brands. So unfortunately I cannot say the name from confidentiality, but with a female CEO that I was working recently, we did a whole rebranding about her, which started with values that immediately we no which started with values and that had an impact on the way she led her people. Then we looked into public speaking, so how she was showing up in conferences. We tried to bring a bit more authenticity, her personal stories and immediately that had a massive impact. First of all, as I said earlier on with the talent, so they start attracting way better candidates and a better fit in the culture of the organization, but also they start attracting way more clients because she became a female role model within her industry, which immediately opened up a whole new revenue opportunity for the company to sell the products by having a CEO, a female CEO, with a strong personal brand, with personality.
Speaker 1:I would also like to give an example from an entrepreneur that I've been working with recently so, again a woman. She managed to build a really successful business within a few millions of revenue every year, and when she came to me she kind of felt that she reached the ceiling of what she could do. So she wanted to enhance her personal brand in order to be able to increase the revenue of the business, create new opportunities. She wanted to launch another business as well, so having a strong position as a founder was really important for her. So we started doing that work and I'm going to talk a bit later about the type of things that I'm looking when I'm helping someone build a personal brand but appearance, personality, public speaking skills again, a lot of work on her mission, what she wanted to achieve and then it also became very clear what her next business would be about how to go about promoting the business, how to raise money in order to support launching the business.
Speaker 1:So, both on a corporate level or on an entrepreneurial level, we can use the personal brand in order to create so many more opportunities in ways that maybe people haven't thought about. Just because personal branding I think it's a buzzword, especially over the last years. Everybody's talking about personal brands, but also what we see is that most successful entrepreneurs are the ones that they do have a very clear and a very strong personal brand, and the reason is because people want to connect with other people. So for me, personal branding also has to do with how you connect with the people around you, and it's a way to have a really intimate connection so people then can trust you, can buy from you, can learn from you if you are having courses, etc.
Speaker 2:So what is it? What does personal brand mean? Because you're talking about all these things like how you are going to attract the right talent and how it's going to help you know what decisions to make. So what do you mean when you say personal brand?
Speaker 1:That's a really interesting question and for me, it's all about sharing with the world your own magic. So many people who come to work with me, and entrepreneurs especially, they think that they have to create a fake persona. Entrepreneurs, especially, they think that they have to create a fake persona, someone that looks amazing, in order to support the growth of their business or whatever goals they might have, but actually it's the exact opposite. For me, personal branding is about how do you understand yourself better, how do you understand what are your strengths, what are your talents, and then how you use this to be magnetic. Essentially, so yeah, personal branding is about how do you show people who you are, and that's why the strongest personal brands are the ones that are very much a representation of the person. That's why it's called personal brand, because it's personal. It's about who you are. It's not about looking at what other people are doing and copying other people, but it's more about what are the things that make you special, different, maybe a little bit. What's the word? Not awkward, I want to say.
Speaker 2:No, you're awkward, yeah, that's fair, not awkward. I want to say, oh, you could? You're awkward, yeah, that's fair, just like three words to describe yota yes, exactly like this.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So I think basically the word I was learning is probably maybe different and particular than other people, and actually a lot of people think that this thing that make them a little bit particular actually are the ones that they need to hide, but actually what we find out is that these are the things we need to amplify and use more, because these are the things that makes us unique. So, for me, personal branding is all of this stuff, but I think the first sentence that I said actually represents the core of it, the heart of what personal branding is.
Speaker 2:It is about sharing with the world your own magic and your own self so it seems like what most people see when and what they think about when we're talking about personal branding is the stuff that's like on the surface you know like.
Speaker 2:What is it that somebody's wearing? What is the style, what are the kind of things that they talk about? Where are they showing up online the content they're creating? And it seems like what you're saying is that's like this tiny little bit at the top of the iceberg, whatever, and actually the only way that works in a way that makes sense is if it's really based off of who you are exactly you are how that matters in the world, how that's different to other people, how that matters in your market, all these kind of things.
Speaker 2:And you find that magic and then it shines through and everyone sees that bit and they go you're just doing well online because she's posting these three things. And then they try and copy you, but actually they're never going to succeed with that because that's not based off themselves.
Speaker 1:That's just they're trying to do what somebody else is doing exactly and also I think people can understand where someone is real or because it's not based off themselves. That's just they're trying to do what somebody else is doing Exactly. And also I think people can understand where someone is real or when it's fake. It's pretty easy actually to figure out when someone is pretending and they do not really own the things that they are talking about or they're not passionate enough. And that is the reason that for me, in my process, when I build a personal brand actually anything that has to do with styling and appearance it comes last. So first we do all the other work that we need to do and then we're going to just make sure, basically, that we're projecting what we found the real person is and what are the things that we really want to bring forward. So we don't want the clothes or the appearance like I don't know what's the expression but we don't want.
Speaker 2:We want the person to wear the clothes and not the other way around got it okay cool, so let me try and summarize and see if I've got my head around this properly.
Speaker 2:So, overall, if you get it right, then having a strong personal brand, having one that is truly representative of you and your values and your mission and what you're trying to achieve, what you're trying to do with the business, is going to allow you to attract all the right kind of customers, the right kind of clients, the right talent who want to work with somebody like you. And then when they get there, you are like what they thought, so they want to stay. And the customers, when they start working with you, they're like oh, yes, you are the way that you seem publicly, so they still want to be working with you. So it's going to lead to better retention of your team, better retention of customers, and then also, people will pay more because they're like yes, you're the one I want to work with and there's nobody else quite like you and this is exactly what I'm after. So you have the right people who are willing to spend more money.
Speaker 1:But all of that is the surface stuff that comes after you've done, actually, what sounds like quite deep work it is deep work and I think a lot of people, um, they just want, and I think a lot of people, they just want me to make them look cool.
Speaker 1:I don't do make them look cool, but that's not where we start from right, because that's the top of the, that's the little bit of the top of the pyramid yes, and I think the whole thing will fall down without the foundation exactly because I think when you don even like with what you wear, the way you talk, like yeah, I can dress you nicely, I can coach you to speak nicely, but if you do not have the confidence and the personality to support all that at some point, first of all you will hate it because you will have to pretend and I think you know, as entrepreneurs we can create any business that we want.
Speaker 1:We can. Just we make the decisions. Probably that's the reason that most of us decided to go on entrepreneurship in the first place and then we create a business and we feel trapped in there because we just have to pretend and be someone that we do not, that we are not. Really so for me, as you said, like all this work, what it does is actually helps you to fall in love with your business, and then, naturally, other people will fall in love with you.
Speaker 2:You're used to that Yota people falling in love with you.
Speaker 1:Got this All right.
Speaker 2:So you said something to me before once that I think is super interesting about how most people who haven't thought about personal branding or haven't thought that much about it, they still have a personal brand. It's just a shit one and it's killing their business and it's causing them all kinds of problems. Can you expand on that a little bit, Like what do you mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. So, first of all, we all have a personal brand, whether we want it or not. As I said, the moment you enter in a room, people create same perception about who you are and what you stand for. Right, so the personal brand exists. That's not debatable. Here we have it. The difference here is do we control the narrative or we just allow other people to control the narrative about who we are? So that's the main difference. And the truth is that for me, as I said, because I come from a background where I didn't know about sales and marketing, I thought that every entrepreneur, the first thing they would put attention to is their personal brand, how they show up, because their whole business is around them as a founder, and it doesn't matter if they are the face of the business or not, because even if you are a founder, who is behind the scenes? You're still running a team, you're still doing collaborations, you're still working with other partners and all of these things right. So your personal brand still plays a role on the way you're collaborating with other people. So what blows my mind every single time is that a lot of people go on to start building a business and they do not know who they are first and what's the type of business that they want to create and, as a result, they end up doing a lot of things that they don't really enjoy and at the same time, I also want to add to that and at the same time, they're also missing a lot of opportunities that for me, it is just so easy to attract. So I'll give a personal example.
Speaker 1:When I left corporate, one of the first things I did was to create a small community, or what I thought would be small. So when I started, I wanted to. My industry is tech, so I felt that there was a gap in the market because there were a lot of women in tech communities, but there were not almost any communities in the UK that they were bringing both people of all genders together, creating an open space for dialogue so we can learn from each other, talk about things that people do not usually talk as much, like imposter syndrome and confidence and all the soft skills that make us really successful. The first event I did in the community I didn't have a good network, so I just started meeting people. Literally for weeks, every day I went for different coffees, drinks and all of that just to gather people for my community. So the first event, I managed to get about 70 people in the room, which was pretty great. Then the second event was at the Telegraph, with 200 people. We brought the representative of AI from Google and so many other amazing people to actually speak at the event and support, and from there on, the community just grew so quickly to 6,000 people. I've done about 70 events so far.
Speaker 1:I've worked with some of the biggest companies from the Telegraph, microsoft, google and so many others, and the reason that all these things happened is because of my personal brand. So I didn't have to do outreach, but people knew who I was, knew what I was passionate about, what was the type of work that I was doing and, of course, I delivered right. So it's not just about building the brand, it's also about delivering the value as the next step. But I think most of us were doing a pretty good job at serving our clients, otherwise we'd probably not be in business. So what I realized is that, through by enhancing my brand, actually I had more and more opportunities coming my way, and I think every entrepreneur is leaving on the table so much opportunity but also so much money just because they are not using their biggest assets in the business.
Speaker 1:That is themselves right, because you build a business in order to do that. It means you're good at what you do, you know your things, you probably love what you do, so you're passionate. There's drive. You want to make an impact. So these things are the things that really attract people People as customers, people as students, people that they want to collaborate with you. So I feel a lot of people. They just are missing all these opportunities and the only thing they need to do is be themselves and just share with the world what is the who they are and what they care about.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like the way that this goes wrong, the way that their personal brand ends up killing their business, is that there's kind of a misalignment, like so they are one person and they are feeling certain things, valuing certain things, got a certain mission, care about certain things, have certain beliefs, but they have this like fake one that they're either doing to try and show the world who they think they should be, or then at least not pulling forward who they really are and actually using all of those advantages.
Speaker 1:But also, I think, a lot of times what I see is that they do not really know what they're capable of until we do this deep work. So a lot of my clients they have so much potential and they're just not aware of that because of imposter syndrome, because of low confidence, and I feel that's such a shame because they could really scale their business so much if they actually knew what is the possibility and the abilities that they have and then leverage this within their businesses. So that's why, for me, my approach in personal branding is a little bit different and I start more with the deep work, because I know when I give the people the tools that they need and the confidence and the belief in themselves, then basically these are tools for life, right, and then they can go and do their marketing and they can do their sales and really they can expand their businesses as much as they want to.
Speaker 2:Nice, all right, let's say that somebody listening to this is like okay, yota, I'm finally bought in. I finally convinced that, yes, this maybe is worth doing. I should be building my personal brand. I should be figuring out more of this deep work stuff, this woo-woo shit that you're talking about who I am, my mission, all this kind of stuff, and therefore, I'm going to come across better and I'm going to attract more people. I'm going to make more money. I'm going to come across better and I'm going to attract more people. I'm going to make more money. I'm going to have higher prices Fabulous, all right, cool. Well, how on earth do I do it? What's the steps? What does someone do first?
Speaker 1:So I'm going to share the steps that I follow. Some of them are easy to follow, also on your own, so I think it's more about taking some time and actually thinking through things. For some others, you might actually need a little bit of help and someone to push you a little bit out of your comfort zone. So, for me, the first step that I would do is learning the story right. So what is the story of the person in front of me? What are the challenges? What are the wins? How did they get here? And these stories are really important because this is how we connect with people. We connect with people when we can resonate with their own journey and we can see ourselves into someone else. So, for me, starting with the stories and understanding, what are the key stories of the founder or of the leader that I'm working with, and what were the learnings? What impact did they have in the way they run their businesses, in the way they do their work, in the way they lead their people all of that. So the first exercise that I get them to do is actually I call it the lifeline exercise. It's all about figuring out what are the most important stories that we can then use as part of your content, as part of when you're in an interview, etc. So step number one are our personal stories. Then step number two is the values. So we need to know what are the values that we stand for and then make sure that these with us. We want this to be the same. We don't want people to have a different experience and we want to make sure that our values are coming through our work, no matter what that is.
Speaker 1:Then the next step is the mission. So why are we doing what we're doing? And the mission? It doesn't have to be always I want to change the world and all of that right. The mission is really personal and really different. Your mission can be around creating wealth for yourself. It can be about creating a good lifestyle, a work-life balance. It can be about others having impact. So a lot of my work, for example, is unlocking people's potential or helping within the diversity inclusion space within my industry. So understanding and thinking through what is your mission and a lot of people push back on that because they think it's just for marketing purposes, but for me, it's really important to know what is it that you are trying to achieve, because then again this becomes a magnet for people. People see that you believe in something and then they either want to support you in your journey they want to be part of that journey or they want to help you to actually achieve whatever that mission might be.
Speaker 2:What if that mission is make a load of money and then travel the world Like why would anybody else care about helping you to achieve your mission of doing that?
Speaker 1:Maybe, in that case, some people actually. Actually, that's a good question, because a lot of us are just working in companies who are just making a lot of money, like I worked for for Amazon, and Amazon is not that wants to make the planet a better place, right? It's a very controversial brand, we would say, and people are working Amazon because it's one of the best companies.
Speaker 2:So sometimes maybe the mission is for you, so that you know why you're doing it, and sometimes, if it's about something bigger than you, then it's maybe going to attract other people to try and help you to achieve it.
Speaker 1:Not really, because I would say, even if your mission is to make a lot of money, some people who want to make a lot of money into your company as well, but also, people might admire you for the wealth that you build, the way you're growing your business, how you're actually went from no money to so much money. So even if your mission is all about more about more personal mission rather than impact changing the world mission, still that can become a magnet for people because people will admire you for the things that you achieved.
Speaker 2:I mean like if I put them on the business and the website right, and I've got, like you know the about section, I put a mission heading and it says make loads of money. John, there are different ways to phrase that I'm not sold, that everybody else is going to be like yes good.
Speaker 1:No, I don't say that You're not going to say my mission is to make money, but I think there are different ways to say that I want to build the best business in doing that, or I want to reach X amount of revenue in X amount of years right. There are different ways that you can actually and that is messaging right and how we're positioning the mission but the mission we want it to be something aspiring, something that people will look up to. Either they want to be part of that or they want to be like us, they want to follow through our steps and all of that, like. Your mission can be to have a million followers on YouTube right, and can be, like you know, I'm starting from zero followers. I've never been on camera before, so people might just follow you to see your journey and how you're getting towards achieving your mission, right. So for every brand, we're going to use the mission in different ways, depending on what is it that the person that we're developing the brand about wants to achieve and also, how does that fit in the business In some companies, there are companies that are very mission-driven're about the planet, about sustainability, and they're going to use that.
Speaker 1:There are other companies that they want to talk more about people, culture. So we're going to highlight that, then, and even just taking it from a founder's perspective, as I said earlier on, yes, some founders they might want to build wealth right and people admire them for what they achieved, and that's not a bad thing the way that I've found some of these things kind of coming through like so we've got the mission, we've got the values we talked about.
Speaker 2:Like one of the things that, like I'm obsessed with is being honest and that really comes across, I know, in people that I talk to and sometimes they would rather that I was a little bit less honest, but I'm like no, I will, I just not lying, I do not, I don't. It makes me very uncomfortable, even if it's like white lies. I'm just like this is you know. So I tend to then hire people who fit with that, who are like very don't. It's like try and be polite and nice and friendly and whatever right, but still like if a client says they've got this great idea and they want to spend all this time working on it and they're going to pay us a lot of money, we're like that's not going to work and we'll tell them and that's like I've seen how that operates through the whole business.
Speaker 2:It means that I don't have to go and check on everybody being honest, because I've attracted people who are into honesty and I talk to them about it all the time and if somebody has said something to a client that wasn't completely honest, I'm like we're probably going to need to be a little bit more brutal with them about this and let them know and that then creates the whole business kind of fitting with that as well.
Speaker 1:Exactly what I meant, right. That's why I think the values work is so important, because it's going to show in the way you're running the whole business and it's going to show in the way you deal with your customers and your people, the people who work for you, your collaborators, whoever that might be right. So for me, that's a great example, actually, of how the brand actually reflects the experience that people will have with you. So for me, for example, one of the things is more my personality. I'm, you know, like touching Not touching, I shouldn't say touching.
Speaker 2:Touching yes, You're touching all your clients. That's fine, you can get away with it. If I did it it'd be a problem. You can get away with it.
Speaker 1:Okay, we cut this, that If I did it it'd be a problem, you can get away with it. Okay, we cut this. That's not go-live. So okay, let me rephrase.
Speaker 1:So, for example, in my business, a big thing for me is like my warm personality and how much I genuinely care for my clients. So I'm totally not the traditional executive leadership coach. When I work with corporate people, I am different and people keep telling me oh, you're different. But that's actually why they want to work with me. It's because I will go, I will make a joke, I will be more relaxed and through that I actually help them to really open up, to tell me things that they probably wouldn't have shared with other people, and that's what makes my work really impactful.
Speaker 1:So some other people would say, oh, but if you are like this, maybe then corporate settings that wouldn't work well. But actually because I brought my personality into my work, that's what makes me different, unique and brings more business into what I do. Um, a different angle about what you said, but just how bringing your personality and your values within your work can actually increase and amplify the things that you do, rather than detract from it yeah, I, I was thinking about our friend Rob, who runs a property business and he'd started out Property Podcast when I don't know quite a long time ago.
Speaker 2:But the standard, normal way of operating in the property space was very salesy and was very like, say, whatever it takes to get the sale, that's like a standard thing. People think about estate agents, whatever and they started I think the original name of the podcast was something like the property geeks and rob is like he's very honest, he'll. He's very modest, far too modest actually, because he'll just like be like oh yeah, I work in property and it's like, oh, you run a multi-million dollar business and have the best business podcast, one of the best business podcasts in the uk, and what have you. But all of that stuff was coming through and then that attracted a certain kind of client to him, which is exactly which was a really good kind of client, but also ones who were repelled by a lot of other people in the market at the time. If you started copying everybody else, then you never would have done that and it's like, so finding, here's his personality, here's this market. How do you find a way those two of those fit together?
Speaker 1:And you know, as entrepreneurs, we never take the time to actually think through stuff. Because we want to do things right. We're more like doers I want to scale the business, I want to do this, I want to do that. But I think actually taking even just a little bit of time to think all about things like the stories that I said what is your mission, what are your values? Are these things actually coming across? So do a brand audit and then see like, okay, these are my things, this is what makes me me, this is what, you know, gets me out of bed every morning and I'm really passionate about what I do. Are these things coming across through my social media, through the way I interact as a leader with my team, through the way I show up in a networking event and I meet new people? How do I introduce myself?
Speaker 1:So, going back to the steps that I follow, another thing that I do is the elevator pitch right, and I don't know if you know what an elevator pitch is. I'm actually going to mention because I think not a lot of people are familiar. So, in theory, you are in front of the elevator and the CEO of your company or someone really important gets in the elevator with you and you have about a minute, maybe even a bit less, to introduce yourself and, ideally, impress them right. So every time with my clients we actually script their elevator pitch and they have to do it again and test it until the ideal scenario is that the elevator pitch makes people ask us more questions and be interested in us. So it's not about showing off, it's more about being interesting. So other people will be interested in us. And this is another part of the process is about how do you introduce yourself? How would what? Yeah, that's it basically. Okay, that's another part of the process like how do you introduce yourself?
Speaker 2:so we've got. We're on step one still. We've gone on tangents, we've told stories, we've had a lovely time right, but we're in the deep identity work section. So we've talked about stories, mission values. So what's next?
Speaker 1:So the next thing is, because we want to get also a little bit sense of style and visuals, I get all my clients to do a mood board. I usually just use Pinterest to do that and basically what I ask them to do is to create a mood board that really aligns with who they are. So we might put clothes, we might put interior design or any other like put specific photos. So some people might love nature, some people might love like big cities, vibe and all of that. So I get them to actually create a mood board that reflects a little bit their vibe and what they stand for, because then we're going to use all that to start creating actually all the actual styling and how the brand looks like. And styling I don't mean just clothing, but also that influences the design work that we might do on developing the visuals of their brand, their website, business cards, whatever it is that we might want.
Speaker 2:Business cards.
Speaker 1:I know right.
Speaker 2:Back in the day, oh my God.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's not say business cards business okay, let me do that again. I know that was very old school. Okay, I'm gonna do that again. All that is influenced by the mood board, just in order to make sure that there is alignment with what they are projecting and who they are, because what we don't want, as we said, is to create someone who looks really, really cool but is not who we are yeah, all right cool.
Speaker 2:So we've right cool. So we've got the deep identity work we've done mission and vision and values and we've talked about clothing style and what your kind of beliefs are overall about style. Now what? What do you do with that?
Speaker 1:So then the next step is audience. So we want to study the audience, and here for me, I look at it from two different perspectives. It's not just the demographics, but it's also the psychographics. So what does our audience love, what do they hate? What makes them really passionate, what makes them interested? So we want to understand as much as possible our people right, the people that we want to speak to.
Speaker 1:And the audiences can be very, very different, as I said, depending on the type of personal brand that we're building. But we need to understand a little bit the psychology of the people and what they want, and how does that align with who we are and how we can work with them better. So that's step two. Then, going to step three, we need to understand the competition. So great, now we know what is our audience, but we want to see what else is out there. What are other people doing?
Speaker 1:The reason we want to do that is not to copy the other people, but is to understand what is it that makes us unique and different. So everybody will have some elements that stand out. So we want to be able to compare ourselves and then see okay, so, based on all these insights that we got the conversation, the research that we did. What is it that makes us different? And there's not out there, and a lot of times that might not be one thing, it might be a combination of things. I was talking to you earlier about my own personal brand and for me it is the bold colors. So that is one thing that makes me different, especially for working in tech.
Speaker 2:That's kind of something that stands out. You look at your personal style and then you look at the competition, and the competitions are wearing boring gray suits and you're wearing a bright pink jumpsuit and it's like oh right, that's different, I can stand out there, OK.
Speaker 1:And that also is how it's my personality, right. Like, actually, these are the clothes that I would wear when I would go out with friends. I like bold colors and all of that. So, for example, one thing that influenced my personal brand is that Then, as I said, it's like my personality, so the tone, the way I'm writing, how that converts into content, is very close to the way that I would talk. So I want, when people read something that is coming from me, and then when they will talk with me, they will get the exact same experience, the exact same feeling. So a lot of the things that are important or my positivity is another thing, like personality traits, right, all of these things that we identified we want to start infusing them into the brand and for me, as I was saying, the combination of the bold colors, the positivity, the more informal tone of style of talking and engaging with people, this is what makes me different than the competition, and it's something that it's not so much out there. So for every person, there will be different things that we will be looking at.
Speaker 1:I'm working with a client right now who is a very successful entrepreneur and, for example, for him is his elegance. He's British. So it's all about the culture and how he's different than people who are doing similar things in the US. So he's kind of bringing a different type of honesty, energy into what he does. It's also like the background, what he was doing before, which is quite interesting and different. So we're using different elements from the stories, as we said earlier on, from the personality, from culture, because these are the things that make him different and these are the things that we want to amplify through his personal brand, because they will make him stand out compared to anyone else who is doing similar things in their industry.
Speaker 2:All right, so we've done deep identity work, We've talked through that and then we looked at what was second.
Speaker 1:Understanding your audience.
Speaker 2:Understanding your audience, and then we looked at competition. Exactly All right. So what's step four?
Speaker 1:Step four is start developing the actual brand voice. So usually what I give to my clients is I call it the personal brand playbook, and basically an AI is exceptional at helping us develop actually brand guidelines. So what goes into the playbook is the mood board. So whoever else helps us with kind of implementing the brand can understand our vibe and what we want to communicate and how we want to come across. It includes the tone of voice. Is it more formal, is it more casual, is it more serious, is it more fun? So all of this work that we did, now we start actually creating some guidelines that anyone who is working and interacting with us copywriters, designers, stylists, like literally photographers, so anything that we might do then we have a clear direction in order to make sure that there will be consistency across all the different channels and all the different interactions that we might have.
Speaker 1:So the next step is actually developing the guidelines that the entrepreneur or the leader can use for implementing and not implementing. What do you say when you actually are doing it? Is it implementing? Yeah, for implementing their personal brand. We have the guidelines and now what? Right Now, it's time to start actually creating the content. So that's when the brand comes to life, and that's when we then, with all this knowledge, now it's time to develop what are the content pillars, what are the types of things that we're talking, and also develop a content calendar. So it's been in order to be really easy for them to actually start creating content.
Speaker 1:So I don't know if that's something, probably that you see quite a lot from your audience and the people that you work with, but content creation and actually really authentic and unique content is pretty difficult to produce and a lot of people they struggle on how to do that. But for me, there I'm using a lot AI. Actually, I have implemented a whole process of how you can use all the brand voice guidelines and all of that that we developed in order then to create content. So, basically, we are training AI in order to create content that sounds like us or reads like us. So it's all about how do we bring now the person within the voice of the way we speak and the way we write and the way we do a podcast and all of these things.
Speaker 1:So the next step is all about content creation and actually and that, for me, I call it actually bringing the brand to life and then finalizing the steps. The sixth and the final step is actually has to do with the appearance, right? So then that's the most fun part. Actually, that's when I take my clients for shopping and basically what I want to do. As I said, I don't want to create a fake persona, but I want to bring the person, I want to bring the confidence. So all the clothes that we choose are mostly actually to reflect the real person, but a lot of times we just don't know what suits us. We might not feel uncomfortable, I don't know.
Speaker 2:How long did it take you to actually brand yourself with your red jacket? Well, I work with the stylist. So there you go and we did a Pinterest mood board and then she sent me through a load of ideas for clothes and I was like I hate all of these. We have to start again completely from scratch. She wanted me. She suggested some stuff with like car keys are they called like kind?
Speaker 2:of like slacks or something like this, and I was just like white trainers. I was just like, okay, you, we've something went wrong in the process. I was like, just start again. Completely, what I want is like grungy rock, look.
Speaker 1:And you see, exactly what went wrong in the process is that it didn't take into account your personality and who you are. But actually I feel like probably you wouldn't lead with a red leather jacket.
Speaker 2:If we actually go back.
Speaker 1:But actually, if we go back to your own content and your own photos, which. I actually will challenge people to do that. I will be so much fun.
Speaker 2:I've tried to delete most of them on the internet. You won't be able to find them. If you look hard enough, you might. The internet, you won't be able to find them. If you look hard enough, you might. I've got a friend, we've got a friend, lawrence, who he loves to. Every time that he finds a photo of me from, uh, I don't know five years ago or something like this, send it through to me and go who is this choir boy? I trust him. I'd let him hang out with my girlfriend I bet he'd walk.
Speaker 2:I bet he'd walk grandmas across the road.
Speaker 1:He probably goes to church, you know exactly, but then, when someone meets you, you're a completely different person, right like? There's a completely different vibe, which actually I think your current brand really reflects that.
Speaker 1:So that's exactly what I mean with kind of bringing out the personality, because I feel like you were hidden inside this good boy, I mean you just needed something to bring that out and kind of you know, make sure that when people see you, they will actually think what who you are, what know, make sure that when people see you, they will actually think what who you are, what will people think and what will people see.
Speaker 1:It will feel the same way. So that's when we're doing shopping and then a photo shoot, which for me is a must, because I usually hate all the photos my clients have when they come to me and it just looks like another person. Because, also, when you've done all this work with yourself, then you bring to the light parts of the personality that were really hidden, either because the person was afraid, or because they didn't have the confidence, or a lot of times it's because they thought that these are the things they need to hide, where actually these are the things that makes them unique and different and we want to bring them forward. So there is where we actually bring the personality and we make sure that the image aligns with the personality that we have explored all right cool.
Speaker 2:So we've finished up. We've got the six steps. We've got our six steps. Let's see if I can remember them right. I've got them written down. We'll see if I can remember them. We've got our deep identity work. We've looked at our audience. We've looked at the competition. We've done some brand development work. Did I miss a step? Guidelines, brand guidelines. All right, cool. We've gone shopping. What else? No, there's something.
Speaker 1:Before that tell us go on yota so we start with deep work understanding who, who you are, what you stand for. Step number two understanding your audience, how they think, how they feel, how they buy. Step number three understanding the competition, and there we're looking at what are the things that make us different from the competition that we can leverage. Step number four we're developing brand guidelines, so it's really clear for anyone who is working with us other professionals to make sure we will have consistency across the brand. Then content creation so we filter all that through AI and we train AI to also help us make sure that the way we show up is actually the way we are and aligned with all the things that we know about ourselves. And then, final step the image Photoshoot, shopping shoot, shopping style, all the fun stuff got it.
Speaker 2:Did you include content?
Speaker 1:yes, okay six steps wicked, all right, yes we've done it, okay, cool so can I add to that?
Speaker 1:if the people who are listening to us, they're thinking, okay, how do I actually go about that? What are the things, things that I can do, where could I start on my own? Like, of course, the type of work that I do is different and it requires more time and more effort, but I would say, even if you have just a little bit of time and you're listening to this episode and you think, okay, I would really like to take a little bit of action, put these things in practice. What are two, three things that I can easily do? I would start with, first of all, write down what are the key stories that you want to be sharing that made you who you are. Think about your mission, think about your values. So three main things. So these are the foundation.
Speaker 1:Then, next step, use AI to help you figure out a little bit your tone of voice. So an easy way to do that is copy and paste some of your previous content LinkedIn posts, whether it's a talk that you gave, an interview, a blog emails, whatever is a course, the transcript of your course. So, whatever it is that you have, import that to AI and ask to analyze for your tone of voice, your style and use this as guidelines. So then, whatever you do, you know that. Okay, these are the guidelines that I need to follow. And I would say, within, as you are developing the guidelines in there, put also the values, the mission and the stories, because AI can really help you. In an ideal world, you would do that with a coach or someone helping you, but I think doing something is better than doing nothing. So, if you have like two hours, just take two hours of focus time and just be a little bit intentional about the things that make you who you are and just think through these simple steps that I'm just sharing.
Speaker 1:And the next thing is create a mood board and then open your closet and see are the things that you put in your mood board actually? Are the colors the same? Is the style the same? Because if they're not, then it means you might need to make some changes and make sure the things that actually that you really like are the way you're also showing up and they're present within your appearance, your image and all of that. And then the last step is content Think about your audience, think about the things that make you different and that, as we said earlier on, and these things can be your personality, your culture, your values, all of the things that we just talked about and then, based on that, think about what type of content can I create that is a little bit different and unique and it actually comes more from my own experiences, instead of just thinking what is the most popular content out there.
Speaker 1:Let me just copy that. So I would say, instead of turning outwards, first turn inwards and ask these questions, because there are so many hidden gems in there that you're just not using.
Speaker 2:All right, beautiful. Okay, if someone's heard all of this and they are like, oh my God, I need Yota's help, I need Yota to help me do this whole personal branding thing. First off, about how long does it take for someone to go through this.
Speaker 1:Usually six months. So by the time we start until we actually are ready to launch the brand usually takes us six months.
Speaker 2:And how can they get in touch with you if they're interested?
Speaker 1:They can apply through my website. At yotatromcom, there's a page specifically for founders branding, so go in there, apply and I will come back to you.
Speaker 2:All right, so that's yotatromcom. We'll put the link in the show notes, the pinned comment, the description, everything like that. If somebody heard this and they're like, okay, I might not be able to afford to work with you one-on-one, what could they do in order to kind of learn some more about this? Where should they go to check you out, follow you, get any of your information?
Speaker 1:So I would say, just social media I'm pretty active LinkedIn, instagram. Just type my name and it will show up. So I would say, just follow me. Feel free to ask me questions. Actually, I would love to see what you think. Feel free to challenge me as well. But I really think there's so much opportunity for us as entrepreneurs if we put a little bit of more attention and intention to our personal brands. So I'm more than happy to answer any follow-up questions that might come from your audience.
Speaker 2:Nice. And if, at the end of this, you want to know for your course business how you can make more revenue, then we've got some help available for you. So go to pimpyourfunnelcom and we are going to figure out for you how much more revenue you could be making. What are the things that you're missing at the moment? What is it you should be putting in place? And we'll even link to training on how to do each of those things. So if you want to know that, then it's going to show you how to double your revenue in 90 days. Go to pimpyourfunnelcom, jota. Thanks so much for coming on today. Really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your wisdom.