Today’s question comes from Jamie at our live recording at Being Boss Miami about how to reveal your markers of expertise and personality when you’re wooing new clients. In other words, in personal branding, how do you blend who you are with what you do?
Emily Thompson 0:00
Hello and welcome to being boss. For this minisode we got a question live from one of our Miami bosses.
Emily Thompson 0:14
Hey bosses, Kathleen and I are honored to be speaking at venture pop a conference for creative entrepreneurs in New Orleans in September. That's right. Again, Evelyn and I are hitting the Crescent City, my very favorite city again, and we're hoping that you will join us. Venture pop is a two day conference held September 17 and 18th. Designed to gather creatives with the guts and grit to grow their business sounds like a place for bosses. To me, purchasing a ticket for venture pop is more than an excuse for a lively weekend in New Orleans. It's an investment in you and your business. Join us for two days of influential speakers and activities built to invigorate and educate and probably a couple of sizer X to find your community grow your business To learn more visit being boss club slash venture pop, we hope to see you there.
Jamie Whitney 1:05
So my name is Jamie Whitney, and I'm a lawyer working with creative entrepreneurs. And my question is, start in starting a business. I'm trying to evaluate a lot of services that I know my business needs. But that are not easy to sort of compare the value of from the outside. So I need to get a logo, I need to build a website, I need to work with a CPA. I've had some business coaches approach me and all of these are offerings where I find it really hard to evaluate, you know whether Jane Smith is better than Jane Doe in what she's going to be able to provide me because I don't have a basis for understanding what the services and I realized I'm kind of doing the same thing most people who would want to hire me are not going to be able to tell just talking to me whether I'm a better lawyer than person x over here.
Kathleen Shannon 2:05
So is that true?
Jamie Whitney 2:07
Oh, of course, I'm a better lawyer than everybody got to
Kathleen Shannon 2:14
squeeze in here. This is a coaching This is a coaching call. Is it true that whenever someone's talking to you that they can't tell that you're a better lawyer than Jane Doe over here.
Jamie Whitney 2:25
So that's actually exactly what my question was. When I'm talking to, you know, the logo designer or the website designer, or whoever, I find myself looking for personality markers for things that I think we might have in common that would make us work well together. Because I don't have any professional markers to go off of. And I'm wondering, are there things that you put out there as service providers? That are markers of your expertise? Or do you kind of go with the Are we going to be able to work well together sort of the softer connections?
Kathleen Shannon 3:05
Turner like dancing.
Jamie Whitney 3:13
Okay, so what you're talking about here is what we call personal branding. And this is blending who you are with what you do people buy from people, especially other creatives. So it is about the vibe that you're giving off. It is about making sure. And, Jamie, I know that you kind of come from you're a month into this, right? Yes. So you're a month into coming out of this corporate world where a lot of your clients are very corporate, and they expect a certain level of corporate pneus from you. But I feel like maybe we were even talking about this around the pool. But I think whenever it comes to finding your voice and making sure that you're blending some of those personality markers into your professionalism, it's asking yourself every single time you're talking to someone, or putting out a piece of content, asking yourself, Is this true? And is there a more honest way? That I could say this? Or is there a way that I could say this that would feel more like me? So for you, I think that there's going to be a lot of deprogramming from the last 10 years and you're there's, there's your ride, Emily.
Jamie Whitney 4:36
I thought they were coming to start the deprogramming.
Kathleen Shannon 4:45
would that look like for you? You know, I think that the first thing for you just be awareness, like, Oh, am I falling back into some corporate speak or some jargon that someone might not be able to understand?
Emily Thompson 4:57
Well, I mean, I think you're just spot on. With personal branding like, and the online landscape is not saturated by any means. But there are a lot of people out there doing a lot of the same things. So whenever it comes down to it like if you are on, or if you're being weighed against someone who has the exact same skills as you, it is your personality that's going to set you apart like I could talk, if the two of you did the same thing, and I talk to the two of you, what's going to make me make the decision is if I like you or not, like which one I like more, this is this is this was not a contest. So so it is about like, this is going to be a huge shift for you. And it's going to be putting your personality into it. But then I get I think it also goes to what, what parts of your expertise are you sharing online? And how much are you giving it away? Because because what you're putting out online is what will prove that expertise, even before someone has the chance to talk to you. And whenever comparing to people that have the same skills. If one's giving it all away for free and showing their expertise in a free setting, then they're going to be the one they go to over this person that has no blog and no email marketing, but just their face on the website. Even if their personality could be better. they'll choose you if you're sharing your expertise more readily.
Jamie Whitney 6:19
But if you can share your expertise using words that you would actually use, and maybe that is a little bit more lawyer speak. That's okay, too. But you just need to let people know what to expect if they go deeper with you. Okay, so I have an exercise for you. And anyone that is listening can try this. And many of you have maybe if you've been listening to being boss for a while, you may have heard this already. But I think that one of the best ways to think about the personality that you want to blend into your expertise is to have an imaginary dinner party. And so what you're going to do is pull up for seats to your table. And you're going to think about inviting for people over for dinner, they can be a historical, fictional celebrities, they can even be someone like a close personal friend, anybody you want. If you have a hard time thinking about specific people, you could imagine inviting archetypes over for dinner. So maybe, you know, that's like more of a broad overview, personality type. And what you're going to do is invite these four guests over for dinner, and you're going to name them and you're going to describe what they're wearing. You're going to list a couple of their core values, you're going to write down their expertise. And then you're going to write down a piece of advice that they would give you like, in their own words, what would they say? And you're going to look at all four of these dinner guests. And you're going to look at what they have in common. What's a little bit different about them? Who do you want to learn more from? Who do you aspire to be more like, and you're going to start to see that these dinner guests are people who are really striking the balance of personal and professional, and really getting that blend. And so I like to use my dinner guests. And here's the thing is that whenever you do your dinner guests, it's kind of like interpreting own dream where like everyone actually represents you. These are all aspects of who you already are. And so imagine your dinner guests, and start to look at them. And I use my dinner guests A lot of times, even for courage. So let's say I really want to talk about something a little more personal, but it's embarrassing. I might look at my dinner guest Lena Dunham, or Amy Schumer. And I'm like, what would they do? And like, Oh, they would have no problem talking about their Who are you know, whatever it is that whatever it is, so, so think about that. It's a fun game to play and it's always changing my dinner guests are always changing. And I again, I think that's part of your complex, evolving personal brand. So think about that a little. Think about that a little bit.
Jamie Whitney 9:10
Love it.
Kathleen Shannon 9:13
Does that help?
Jamie Whitney 9:14
Yeah, it does. Okay, I'm actually having my dinner party right now.
Kathleen Shannon 9:21
And that dinner for dinner party exercises in the Braid e course. If you guys are interested, braidcreative.com/ecourse
Emily Thompson 9:32
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