Annabelle King Talk + Social

Ami: [00:00:00] So, without further ado, let’s welcome Annabelle

Annabelle: King.

Ami: Most of you, it looks like you have your notebooks ready. Um, if you don’t have a notebook and pen, just let us know. We’ve got Kylie here with some notebooks and she can help you out. She’s just

Annabelle: making a beer for my old lady eyes.

Hi everybody. Um, Ami, thank you so much for such a wonderful introduction. Um, It’s been a joy being your friend, uh, as a friend and an industry friend and we’ve done lots of collaborations over the years, so it’s been very nice to have you in my life. Um, and I’m delighted to be here, and I’m so happy to, uh, be talking at Creative [00:01:00] Pulse, and I hope I get to chat with lots of you later.

Um, without further ado, um, let’s build your personal brand. Okay, I love building brand stories. Like, it’s literally my happy place. I spent two decades building brand strategies and brand stories, and I studied it for many years before that, so I won’t bore you with that stuff. But I literally love it.

Like, there’s very little that I love more than nerding out and building an awesome brand strategy. Except, one thing I do love more is helping other people build their own strategies. I was trained as a facilitator back when I did my master’s a zillion years ago. Um, and I used every opportunity I could to facilitate collaborative sessions, brainstorms, workshops.

I’ll talk more about that later. The reason I love facilitating strategy development is because I love helping people figure out the puzzle pieces and put them together and have their own aha [00:02:00] moment. Because when you have that smile in your mind for that idea, it’s yours. Like you own it. Um, and I hope tonight I can do that for all of you, even in a little way.

So let’s learn and create together. I am going to share my story and how I did not a very good job of selling myself and what I did and how that led to me building my own personal brand. And then how I started to see the need in other people, and built a process to develop a personal brand strategy.

Which I’m going to share with you tonight, and we’re actually all going to do a little piece of that process. So that’s why you’ve got your workshop materials there, and that’s why I’m really happy that we’ve all got desks, and we’ve got something to lean on, and so you’ll actually get to put some of this learning into action.

Okay, before I get started, just a show of hands, who here has a personal brand? Or feels like they’ve kind of worked [00:03:00] on a personal brand? Okay, nice. Okay, who has a personal brand message? Like one key message about themselves, that’s about the succinct, like that’s succinct, and it’s the compelling and unique value that you offer?

Alright, okay, so less people. Um, okay, so the nice thing is, For anybody who’s already worked on their personal brand, what I’m going to share with you tonight is going to help you evolve what you already have. Because you’re already on the journey. And for those who don’t feel like they have one, or they kind of dabbled in it but don’t feel like it just yet, I’m going to give you a framework, and you’re going to be able to make it yourself.

Okay. Can anybody tell me why brand messaging is so important? So, I mean, like, a brand, like an offering, like product, service, or experience, or a personal brand message. So, Like, hands up, anybody tell me, why is brand messaging important? Differentiates you

Attendee: from your other [00:04:00] competitors. Yes,

Annabelle: differentiates you from your other competitors, that’s really important, pretty crucial.

Did you have your hand up?

Attendee: Um, I don’t know, there’s so many things I can’t think

Annabelle: of. What’s the first one that comes to

Attendee: mind? Okay, what he said, okay. Well, you need a brand message because if people don’t, like Simon’s next question, They don’t buy what you do. They buy what?

Annabelle: Nice. I love that you commented on Simon Sinek.

People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it. That’s the why is the emotional connection. Yeah. The why is the emotional connection. Connecting emotionally is really, really important. Anybody else tell me why brand messaging is important?

Attendee: So people, ’cause they’re looking for a solution to their problems personally.

Annabelle: Yes, exactly. They’re out there looking for a solution. So if you have a good brand message, they can find you. They can see that you are a match to solve their problem. Anyone else?[00:05:00] 

Nice. There’s two things there. Demonstrate intangible concepts. So when you talk about benefits, those are intang they’re kind of intangible. Some of them are tangible, some of them are intangible. But emotional benefits are intangible. Like how you feel when you work with somebody as an intangible benefit.

And then the second thing you said? Yes, yes. So giving people a taster of what you’re like. Like what it’s like to work with people. Okay, those are all wonder wonderful things. Thanks. I’m going to tell you, I’m going to take it back to the beginning for a second. Effective marketing is getting the right message to the right people, in the right place, at the right time.

And that creates a connection with the customer. And that connection with the customer either does something in their mind or does something physically. And what I mean by that is in their mind you’re either changing their perception, you’re changing how they think, how they think, You’re maybe [00:06:00] just raising awareness, they didn’t know about you, and now they know about you.

Into their consideration set, where they’re considering you. And then, physically, it’s like changing behavior, right? They’re either, they might buy, they might use your product, they might, maybe they’re a lapsed user and they use again, maybe it’s a referral, but it’s an action, right? So, that’s why we draw, that’s why we try to make the connections.

We’re, we’re trying to, you know, promote one of those, or promote one of those things. But if your message isn’t right, it doesn’t matter if you reach the right people, it doesn’t matter if you have a fancy pants media plan, and you’ve got an awesome ad budget on Facebook, it doesn’t matter if you get to so many of your audience, it doesn’t matter if you get them right at the right time, and just when they would be ready to buy, your marketing fails if the message isn’t right.

If you don’t say the right thing, none of your marketing can work. It doesn’t matter. So getting your message right is [00:07:00] fundamental. Um, it’s fundamental to, especially when you’re a person in the face of your business, like it’s imperative to have a good brand message about you and to treat yourself like that.

Hey, like the way you would work for your clients and come up with something really good to say for them, maybe to sell their product, services or experiences. You’ve got to do that for you. And it’s even more imperative now today in this world where we work so remotely, we have so many less opportunities to be in the room with prospective clients.

I mean, most of us are winning our business online. We’re having zoom meetings, you know, often that’s like the first in person experience you’re having with people. So in a remote world where you can’t be everywhere and you can’t talk to people in person, your brand is out there. It’s on all the channels.

So everywhere your, you are, your persona, whether it’s your LinkedIn profile or your Instagram or ads you’re putting out, like, [00:08:00] that’s you. So it’s really important that you’ve got super strong brand messaging. Okay, now that we’ve established, um, the importance of good brand messaging, I’m going to tell you a little story about my journey.

So, I spent 15 years in agency land, and I worked with some amazing global agencies. I worked with TVWA, and I got to nerd out and learn some amazing strategy project, processes, like the just famous disruption process in TVWA. I worked for GRAIN, I worked for Local Heroes Rethink, um, a number of Irish agencies that you might not recognize, but DDF HMB was Ireland’s largest advertising agency, and they owned a number of other smaller agencies that were quite big.

popular as well. Um, and what did I do? I built strategies. I built all sorts of strategies. I built brand strategies, digital strategies, social media strategies, data strategies, CRM strategies, integrated strategy, you name it. I built every single type of strategy you can think of. [00:09:00] And like many, many, many, many times.

I also facilitated strategy development. So I brought teams together and helped them create strategy. I brought agencies together to create strategy. So I led inter agency teams where we would have a head of different, like different agencies, or a head of strategy in different agencies, and together we would build a strategy, an integrated strategy for the client.

Um, I led workshops, all sorts of big, I led the strategic direction of clients businesses. So the account director were gonna handle the day to day, and I would come in and help where the account was gonna go and the strategic direction of their business. I built strategies for a wide range of brands. Um, like huge multinational brands.

I worked for multinationals many times in my big agency career. I worked for multinationals like PepsiCo and Molson Coors where I would actually build strategies for a portfolio of brands. It was nice when I used to build them for like seven chocolate brands in Nestle. It was a lot of chocolate. I didn’t, couldn’t, [00:10:00] couldn’t eat Nestle for years after that.

But I also built them for products, services, experiences. I even repositioned and built brand strategies for some local advertising agencies and digital agencies here. Not just because of my expertise in brand strategy, but because I understood the agency world and landscape so, so well. But I didn’t sell strategy.

I didn’t sell strategy. I talked strategy. I, you know, nerded out on strategy. I built strategies. I would talk to the clients all day and night about strategies if they listened to me. But I didn’t sell them. And then six years ago, I opened my own consulting practice. I liked storytelling. And I started promoting what I did.

And so, for me, you know, you always kind of pick a lead promotional mechanic for your business. And for me it was speaking events. Because I kind of figured like If I go and talk about my expertise, my [00:11:00] experience, and what I do, and my point of view, people will kind of decide if I’m a man for them. And they’ll let me know, do you know?

So that was my idea, and I spoke at a lot of speaking events. I spoke here five years ago, it was one of my first speaking events. So actually coming back here and speaking is so nice. I was saying speaking at Creative Pulse is like, the audience is like a warm hug. Someone asked me if I was nervous earlier and I was like, no, this is going to be great.

And I spoke at strategy events. I was asked to sit on a panel of agency leaders of Vancouver. And that, I tell you, that invite got the imposter syndrome riling up. But I held my own. I talked a lot. It worked out OK. Turns out I knew one or two things. So, you know. Um, so anyway. I was doing lots of speaking events, doing lots of, running lots of workshops, you know, trying to raise my profile and get out there and get seen and have people kind of refer me to other people.

And [00:12:00] what was I selling? I was selling lots of strategy. I was selling, you know, when clients talked to me and they needed marketing solutions, I would tell them about all of the things I could do. I mean, I’d ask them what their problem was first and tell them about the most relevant ones. But the point was, like, I was selling a lot of different types of strategy.

So, and I felt like it was too much. Like even in any one conversation, I was just sharing too much. It just wasn’t focused enough. So like a good strategist, I shared, I decided on an area of focus, and I created a brand positioning around that area of focus. Because it’s better to be a master of one, you know, a master of one thing, than a jack of all trades.

And guess which one it was? It was brand strategy. Because remember, if your message doesn’t work, your marketing fails. If your message isn’t right, your marketing fails. So when I looked at all of the types of strategies I could do, I was like, well it’s got to be that one. It’s [00:13:00] fundamental to marketing success.

So, no matter what client comes to me, we’re going to have to make sure that this is working first. Clients didn’t always understand when I talked to them about brand strategy. When I talked to them a lot, I felt like I was explaining what brand strategy was over and over and over again. And I mean really explaining it because like, I knew a lot about it.

Um, I started looking for different ways to describe brand strategy. So I was calling it brand messaging, key brand messaging, brand promise, which is the heart of a brand strategy. Um, unique selling propositions, um, brand story. I mean, that one definitely went on for quite a long time. But even still, people were a bit like, Yeah, oh, okay, sounds good.

Now, I was still winning business. I mean, I still like, you know, I could still feed myself and keep the company going. Um, but I think people were buying from me because they liked me. Um, or they were like, oh, [00:14:00] this girl seems to know what she’s talking about. I don’t really know what, like, I don’t really know what I’m buying.

But, you know, I feel like she can probably solve this problem for me, like that’s, that’s, that’s kind of how I kept going, I think, in those first few years. So what do you think I did next? Like, if you were out there selling the thing that you create, or you make, and people didn’t understand it, what would you do?

The solution to,

Attendee: in terms of their business problem. Yeah, so how to present what

Annabelle: you do as the solution to their business problem. Okay, great. Anybody else?

Attendee: I’d probably educate them. Oh, sorry? I’d educate them. Because sometimes it’s hard to pitch something to something about what the thing is if people don’t have any idea of what you’re

Annabelle: talking about. Yeah. So you’d educate them. Yeah.

For sure. And I definitely, I definitely was doing that a lot. In fact, I feel like I was teacher Annabelle. Sometimes. Like, I think sometimes they’re like, let me out of the [00:15:00] room.

Attendee: Focus on one industry. Become

Annabelle: Oh, yes, yes, you had the old vertical and horizontal positioning. I’ve debated that a lot myself over the years for me and for many, many, um, many times.

Yeah, so the good thing about choosing a vertical is you become an expert in not just your speciality, but in that industry, like tourism, for example. So that’s good. That definitely helps narrow the field down for people to, to find you.

Attendee: Another thing I would, I would do, I would listen to the market very Intensively.

And also I’ll run a survey to see which direction that could go.

Annabelle: Nice. So you would do some research and find out what people actually wanted? ? Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point. Okay. Yeah.

Attendee: Uh, just to add to that, I would ask for their story. Yeah. ’cause then you can point

Annabelle: [00:16:00] Yes. I love that. So when you ask for their story, you, you bring them into the story so that they’re part of, part of it. Yes. These are all great ideas. I wish I had some of you guys there when, when, when I was at this point. So what I did was, because I spent so much time educating them for so long and it wasn’t working, Um, uh, I built sales tools.

I built PowerPoint deck after PowerPoint deck after PowerPoint deck. Like, honestly, you wouldn’t believe how many PowerPoint decks I had in those years. I built case studies, I reframed case studies, I built more case studies and more case studies. I built so much content, like so much content. Like I mean, I was just like creating content all the time.

Just trying all these different ways to get the message across. I was crafting sales scripts. I was listening to podcasts about selling. I was, um, reading books about selling. I literally was studying selling, going like, how can I do this better? Um, clients were like, oh yeah, and everything I was doing was to [00:17:00] educate them.

So again, I was trying to educate them on what I did and how I created it. Um, which is important because if you put yourself in the client’s shoes, you’re kind of like, oh man, this girl’s coming back to teach us more things now. And the clients are like, here she is again, telling me more stuff about strategy.

And I was exhausted. I was exhausted. I didn’t get into the business to become a content creator. Like I really didn’t. I don’t mind doing a bit of it, but it was just, I felt like, man, why isn’t this working? So I stopped making new things. And I started testing out what I was saying, for your research point.

So I started testing what I was saying. So if you remember before, I kept saying brand strategy and it wasn’t landing. And an important note is also, I had been working with big multinationals and big companies before, but also in agencies where the clients were just a bit more sophisticated, whereas when I opened my consultancy, [00:18:00] they were more small to medium businesses, which, you know, they’re just, you know, just wouldn’t be like, you know, marketing directors all the time.

So I started testing out what I was saying. Instead of saying brand strategy, I started talking about the components, the smaller pieces that were more digestible. I would talk about brand positioning. And people got it. People knew brand positioning was important, even if they didn’t quite know what it was.

Or I would be like, let’s create your unique selling point. Or I would ask them if they knew what it was. So people just kind of knew it was important. I would say, oh, I’ll do a competitor audit. I mean, it’s a no brainer. Go out there and research your competitors and see what they’re saying. It’s like you can see the value in it.

Like, I don’t have to sell the value. Customer research, finding out what your customers needs, needs or want, need, want, or what their motivations are. Again, it’s kind of a no brainer. And then brand messaging, which is the thing I was kind of trying to work on before, uh, but hadn’t quite figured it out. Um, so, clients, all of these things have to be done to create a brand [00:19:00] strategy.

And I would just talk about them in pieces and people, people got it. But what do these things actually deliver? So I’m going to bring you down a little messaging rabbit hole for my experience. So, brand positioning. When you do brand positioning, it helps you create a competitive edge. Like, that’s what it delivers.

A good brand position delivers a competitive edge. What does a competitive edge deliver? Well, it helps customers choose you. I feel like this was already said earlier, which is great. If you stand out from your competitors, then customers know you’re different and can choose you. Okay, competitive audit. So what does that deliver?

Like when you go out and research competitors, well, it, it helps you uncover opportunities in the marketplace. When I started saying that to clients, they were, I was like, Oh, do you want me to uncover opportunities for your brand in the marketplace? They’re like, yeah, that sounds great. Uh, but when you uncover opportunities in the marketplace, what happens?

You get to [00:20:00] expand into new niches and grow your market share. Like, you know, so if I start talking about that, clients are very excited. When you do customer research, you get to understand what your customers need and want. What can you do with that information? Well, you can help make your customers happier.

I mean, if you’ve got happier customers, they buy more, they refer to your friends. Brand messaging. Okay, so what does brand messaging deliver? It can help you communicate a unique value. It’s brand offers. But what does that deliver? It just helps your ideal customers know you’re for them. Whether it’s you or for a brand.

OK, so. Thank you for going down the rabbit hole. So when you put all of these things together. Customers choose you. And expanding into new niches. And growing market share. Making customers happier. And attracting your ideal customers more than one of those things bring you. But it can grow your business.

And it just became so simple. It can grow your [00:21:00] business. And that’s what I, like, That was the clinch. That was the clincher line. But how could I relate that to strategy? If I knew that that was the thing that was really going to, like, get clients interested, how could I relate that to strategy? Well, I build brand stories that grow businesses.

I build brand stories that grow businesses. When you’re in I Like Storytelling, we build brand stories that grow businesses. When you’re collaborating with me, we’re building brand stories that grow businesses. The brand stories are strategies, of course, but strategy, brand strategy is just a little bit too marketing speak.

And brand stories is more approachable. Um, so that was, that was it. And the clients were like, yes, I get it. I’ll buy. Um, and the project started rolling in now. It wasn’t quite as instant as that. Obviously I still had to have conversations with people that, you know, move them down, move them down the line, but [00:22:00] the conversations were so much easier.

I was just opening with them. Hi, my name is Annabelle. I built brand stories to grow businesses. What do you need?

You know, and then we would talk about the problem. Then I started seeing the same need. With people, other, with my clients who were coming to me, who were the face of their business. So, wealth management advisors, who were the face of their business. Mortgage advisors. Lots of people, I’m going to show you lots of examples later.

But, like many of you in the room, are the face of your business. Like, you’re selling your services. But also, my industry friends who were in their careers. They also wanted to raise their profile. Some of them wanted to position themselves as an expert in their field. Some people were getting ready to move, and they were just like, Hey, I just want to polish up my, my, uh, my, uh, personal brand, so that I can, you know, look better in the market before I go [00:23:00] looking for another job.

Or some people were successioning. There was lots of reasons, but it was happening with people who owned businesses, and it was happening with people who owned, uh, careers. So, I developed a process to build your personal brand. And that’s what I’m going to share with you tonight. So in my process, a personal brand strategy is two fold.

One, it’s a personal brand statement, which is your message. Your key brand message about you. And it’s a content strategy and a marketing plan to put that message out into the market and reach your target audiences. And that’s like your message delivery. Tonight we’re just going to focus on the personal brand statement because, you know, we’ve only got a little bit of time together.

Um, but you can learn more, lots more about all of these things. So, when you build a personal brand statement, you need, it needs, you need to consider a few things. Now, they might come into the personal brand statement directly, or they might be implied. But you need to consider these things. Who is your audience?

Like, your audience, when they read your [00:24:00] personal brand statement, they need to know that you are for them. Um, it also needs to include what you do. And so, remember for me, it was brand strategy, that’s the thing I did. But what I delivered. And the growing businesses. The brand strategy delivers business growth.

So it has to have what you do and what you deliver. And ideally you want to have a unique value piece in there that’s just about you. That’s super special and just about you. If you have all these things, you’ve got a winning statement. So let’s look at my one again. So I build brand stories. So what I do is the brand stories.

And those are brand strategies as I mentioned before. What I deliver is business growth. And the audience is businesses. So here it’s implied, it’s anybody who’s leading a business, running a business, managing a business. Anybody who’s looking after the business is going to be interested. Ian Kramer is an amazing human being.

He’s a life coach, he’s a personal trainer, um, he’s an [00:25:00] energy healer, he’s a Pilates teacher, he’s a rock climbing coach, he’s um, He’s also a master in two martial arts, which apparently takes a few decades to do. Um, and, and there’s more. I just, we, we, the slide would go on forever if I put all the things up there.

He’s an amazing human being, but he does a very wide range of things in how he helps people. His personal brand statement is, I help people upgrade their lives with whole being coaching. I help people upgrade their lives with whole being coaching. The cool thing about this was we couldn’t call him a coach.

I couldn’t call him a coach because all those things he did were in different camps of coaching. So I actually coined a new role for him as a whole thing coach. So I went and researched all the different ways that I could describe what he did. And that was it. And that’s the cool thing about building your own personal brand.

You can make up shit if you want to, as long as it makes sense. Like this [00:26:00] makes sense. Like when you read it, you get it. Um, and I have other examples of that too, but if I digress, I’ll go over time. Um, Andrew and Will from OK Day, some of you will probably know them in the audience, they’ve been here many times.

Um, so they are brand designers, they are illustrators, they’re brand studio owners. Um, and their, uh, personal brand statement is, we create unexpected brands that pull you in. We create unexpected brands that pull you in. When I did the competitive audit for them, what I discovered was all the other brand and design companies, nobody was talking about the effect a brand has.

So you know when you see a really cool brand and you get goosebumps? Like you literally have a visceral reaction. You’re just like, wow! Or you have that smile on the mind. You’re like, yes! Well, so that’s why we went for it. Let’s bring in the effect. So we made it so it was a USP. Okay, I have many [00:27:00] more, but you’ll have to go onto the website and have a look at those.

Because right now, we’re going to workshop! We’re going to workshop a little piece of this process. Albeit, a very important piece. So we’re going to workshop the what you do and what you deliver. And I’ve just popped this up as a little, uh, reminder. Um, and I believe that’s what I have on your sheets there.

So don’t worry, you don’t have to read all this, it’s just to help you out. Um, But first, if you will indulge me, I’ve done a lot of learning, a lot of listening. I call it the Annabelle y vision. I don’t know if you’d like to tell me. Um, let’s have a little mindful moment together. So, come sitting tall, spine straight, chin parallel to the ground.

If it feels comfortable, close your eyes.

Place one hand on your belly and one hand on your heart.

And without doing anything, without changing anything, just notice [00:28:00] how you feel and just notice how you’re breathing.

Gently draw your belly to your heart and breathe into the hand on your chest.

And I’d love you to draw out each inhale and each exhale a little bit longer with every breath. Keep dragging your breath side until you reach four seconds per inhale, and I’m going to a little micro pause and four seconds for exhale. There’s no rush, take your time to get there.[00:29:00] 

Four seconds for inhale and a little micro pause, four seconds for exhale.

Now that we’ve calmed your beautiful heart down, keep your eyes closed if they’re closed and gently relax your hands down to your thighs. And I invite you to remember a moment. A moment in your life where you felt like you were in flow. And that might’ve been creative flow where, you know, the ideas were just coming idea after idea, after idea, or the thoughts were just coming or things were just lining up.

The synchronicities were just like, bam, bam, bam. This is just. So easy might even have been a conversation where you were just in that wonderful bounce back and it was just [00:30:00] evolving. Whatever feeling and flow means for you. Just remember a memory of when you felt in flow, and I’d love you to go back to that memory and just feel it, go back and feel what that felt like.

And I invite you to remember another moment, A moment when an idea came to you. When you had that moment, that moment where the gift of the idea popped into your mind. You might have done all the work, you may have done all the steps, you might have been up late, you might have had more coffee, whatever your process was to get you there, you had done that and you were just in that moment when that idea came, like a gift from beyond.[00:31:00] 

Place one hand on your heart and the other on top. And just feel that feeling of creativity. You know what it feels like. Bring those moments together and just feel how it feels in your body and your mind and your heart. Let’s

use that to make something for you. Your eyelids are closed. Flutter your eyelids open. Let’s get started. Okay. You’re of paper so you can write on the back of one of your pieces of paper there. If you like. I’d probably write on the back of a key tape. Um, and you’re going to take four minutes and you’re going to write down all the things that you do.

So like me, you might write down the big things like brand strategy, but you might write down [00:32:00] all of the components too. And this is just a long list, it’s not a perfect list. It’s just get out all the ideas and the things that you do on paper. And I’m going to set a timer and I’ll give you a heads up when you’ve got a minute left.

I will, I will save you from the buzz. Um, okay, the next one’s easy. Okay. You made your long list, now you’re going to make a short list. I want you to pick two to four things, four maximum, absolute maximum. Um, narrow them down to things that are the most important things that you feel that you offer. The things of the, you know, where you feel like you’re delivering lots of great value.

So we’re just going to do this like, quite fast, because normally you know the answer. So, we’ll go for a minute and see how you are. So you’re just picking your top two to four. And I’d love you to take the two to four and put them on their own sheet of paper. So just like a nice clean sheet of paper. So we’re kind of like starting, starting afresh with your, with your, with your [00:33:00] top, your top do’s.

Is everyone good? Yeah? Okay. Now, find a friend. So, find yourself a buddy. Um, and if anybody doesn’t have a buddy, put the hand up and we’ll match you up with a buddy.

And I, also, also a nice excuse to meet somebody. So guys, the next exercise, the next exercise, everyone with your friend. You’re going, one of you is going to present your top two to four things to your friend, your new friend. And you’re going to brainstorm what those things deliver. So you’re going to present, Hey, I, I, I do, um, uh, brands positioning, I do a competitive audit, and you’re going to together brainstorm, what does that deliver?

And for your new friend, there’s a couple of different roles you can play. One, you can be the supportive friend and be like, Hey, [00:34:00] just tease it out. Like, what else could that do? And how else could that benefit? You can ask questions like, what is the outcome for the client? What is the benefit? You can have fun and put yourself in the client’s shoes and be like, well, I’m the client.

What’s in it for me? You know, check in with your friend and see if they like the sass version, you know. Eh, but have a bit of fun with it, you know. Um, so you’re gonna do seven minutes first. I’m gonna give you a one minute time before we’re done. And then you’ll do seven minutes, you’re gonna reverse. And the time goes quick guys, so get right into your first one.

Okay, so go. Alright everyone. Alright everyone, okay. How does everybody feel about that experience? Thumbs up? Thumbs down? Nice. Did you make, make a new friend? Nice. Nice. Isn’t it so nice when you help each other understand your unique value? Um, did anybody find out any, [00:35:00] anything interesting about what their work delivered?

Or did their friend help them kind of uncover something that they just hadn’t thought about before? Yes. Yay. Tess? Oh, um. She asked such good questions. Nice. Nice.

I did hear some of those questions. Yes. She was really We just

Ami: have some microphones. Oh! So we can hear people. Um, just put your hand up and we’ll run a microphone to you. Oh,

Annabelle: sorry. No, it’s fine. I didn’t think about that. Um, okay. Anybody else learn something interesting? I feel like I heard somebody over there.

Anybody put up their hand? Okay, in the corner there. Behind you, Adria.

Attendee: Um, yeah, I, yeah, it’s just like, um, Simon reminded me that, like, one of my humorous taglines has done really well, even though it’s like, everyone comes up with the serious stuff, people know me for my sense of humor, so it’s nice to be reminded that.

Annabelle: Lovely. And then that’s that thing that also ties into what you said earlier about [00:36:00] having a little mini experience of you. Yes. Yeah. Nice. Anybody else learn anything interesting or a different way to describe the benefit of what they do? Thank you. And this gentleman here.

Attendee: Yeah, hi. Rima actually helped me figure out a good USP that I hadn’t really thought of.

Nice. It was about speed and agility, like, I’m an independent filmmaker and creative director, so the kind of advantage I have over bigger shops like Rethink is that I have quick turnaround times. So I showed her a commercial that I made and she was surprised to know that I did it in two weeks and she said, yeah, that’s the USP you need to I hadn’t really thought of that, so really, thank you.

Annabelle: Amazing! Amazing! I mean, other people see things that we don’t see, because we’re like in our own head. Okay. I’ve gone over time a little bit. There’s still more to share. Um, [00:37:00] that wasn’t really part of the process. The process, the process itself is bigger. You go through, like, this is what the worksheet looks like.

You go through what the audience is, like, Who the audience is, different ways to describe them, what you do, you do, what you do and deliver is in the top middle. Then you look at the impact of the work that you do, the results that come to your clients on the right. Bottom, we talk about strengths, and when I say talk about, you actually, when you do this process with me, or when you do it yourself, you do a strengths test and you get lots of juicy stuff out of that, it’s really cool.

And then you uncover your unique value, eh, and that can be a combination of a few things. And. To build a brand, a personal brand strategy, and to just really do your due diligence, and like, uncover all of the things that you could say about you, you’ve got to do a little bit of research. Because just like we’ve seen here, other people see things in you, you don’t see.

So, it’s good to, you know, do some client surveys, have, do some interviews with people, with your customers. You know, there’s a few different things you can do. Um, [00:38:00] and then, What we do in my process is, you narrow them all down, you fill out this worksheet, and then you make combinations. You make combinations, and then you do lots of shitty first drafts of personal brand statements.

You do loads of them, it’s great, and you get them all out, and then you find there is a gem in there. There is always a gem. Sometimes a few. And then you create a personal action plan to put it into action. So that’s what the full process looks like. And if you would like to take this further, and I really hope you do, because even now, like, this exercise that you’ve had, like you said, you’re going to go away now and think about those questions.

You can just keep mulling over the, hey, what do I do, but what does that deliver, question over and over again. How does this benefit, what’s in this for the client, how does this benefit the client, what’s the outcome? Keep asking yourself those questions, you’re going to get some really juicy messages that you can share.

There are many, I will help creative folks like yourselves, um, uh, create personal brand strategies. Um, and there’s many ways you can do this. You can give it a go yourself. [00:39:00] You’re gonna, they’re gonna do a wonderful edit of this, this talk. You can take this talk and you can take these materials and you know, you can go onto my website and download all of the free content and you can give it a go.

Um, and you’ll probably come up with something really good. If you’re the type of person who would like the confidence of like, knowing you’re doing it the best way, um, I have a self guided course that’s pretty awesome. Um, if you’re the type of person who likes to be in community and enjoys like this kind of workshop experience that we have, um, I’m doing a live course in November where it’s like part self guided and every week we do like a two work, two hour co working session.

It’s, it’s amazing. Um, and then the other option is if you’re like, I don’t want to do this. It’s too much work. I can do it for you. Um, so I do want to tell you about this course. Whether it feels like it might be for you or whether you might know somebody who might like it, I’m so excited about it. It’s the first time I’ve done this course like this.

Um, so it’s a live course in [00:40:00] November and it goes for four weeks. And how it works is we’re going to do two hour co working sessions. And it’s only a very small group so we get to engage a lot. And in those co working sessions, you A two hour co working session each week, where I share, like, hey, what our tasks are for that week, and we work through the tasks.

Like, we work through the activities, and then after that, you’ll have, um, self guided materials that you can use if you haven’t completed all the stuff in the co working, cause you might have, um, but if you want to, kind of, move ahead, or if you want to refine something. And then, finally, the third and most important part of it is the community support.

You get to be in a group of like minded people, Um, and we celebrate each other’s successes, we share each other’s personal brand statements, and we like, share ideas for feedback. Oh, sorry, that was the timer for the exercise. Um, we share ideas for feedback, um, and I will say that like, it’s, I, it’s definitely like, like minded people that like to do this sort of thing.

Like, you’re kind of into personal development and [00:41:00] professional development. It’s, it’s a, the personal brand strategy is a combo of the two. So, people always, people always make great friends, um, you know, when they’re kind of doing these collaborative things. I’m doing like a really small group, and I just have a few spots set for the moment.

Um, and we start on Wednesday the 6th, so two weeks. Okay, so if you’re interested, you can run and sign up with that QR code. Um, but if you go onto this page, it’s the Personal Brand Strategy page on my website, you can download all the free content if you want to give it a go yourself. You can learn about all the benefits of having a personal brand strategy.

You can keep in touch with me. I would really love to see if you put some stuff out into the world. You could even go now and post about some of the things you deliver. You could just do a post about that and tag me and tag Ami. We’ll talk about that later. And if you go further, share more posts that we can see.

So, just before we wrap, I would love for each of you just to have a moment yourselves. Just to think about, was something that you, was there [00:42:00] something you really liked about this? Something you learned? Maybe something that happened in a conversation with your friend? Just something that you’ll like, you want to stop and mark and go, Oh yeah, that was kind of cool.

If anybody wants to share? I resonate with all

Attendee: the things about the brand messages and stuff. Oh, there, sorry, should we go to the mic for you? Okay.

Well, I’ve been trying to I do content writing and web writing, but I feel like you need to have some kind of branding as a starting place to do those things, especially when you’re saying, writing a copy for a website, and then say you’re doing content writing to supplement that, like to build authority.

But I find, like as I’ve been trying to build my website, because I’ve just started, like, I have a vision of kind of what I want to do, that the whole branding stuff is like been overwhelming. For me, even, to say, well, Like, and, you know, does every business owner, like, say a small business owner, they don’t need everything that, [00:43:00] say, a brand like Nike has?

Like, what you say, like, I’ve been, like, you know, getting information from, like, all these, like, more people like you, and who have more experience in the industry, and it’s like, they all say, like, just start with a brand story. You’re brown stories, you’re brown messaging, like, like what you said, because you could get into like brown purpose, brown promise, brown mission, brown, I

Annabelle: mean, I know, I love to make, I love to

Attendee: make it simpler.

It’s very overwhelming. And I think when you’re coming from a, like when you’re dealing with small business owners or entrepreneurs, they don’t, like you say, they don’t have any ideas. So yeah, I find that the fact that you said that was like, okay, maybe I just have to say I do brown messaging and whatever that looks like.

For the customer or brand story,

Annabelle: because

Attendee: they all have technical terms in the branding world, but

Annabelle: yeah, I think there’s a

Attendee: lot of overlapping as well.

Annabelle: Yeah, there’s, [00:44:00] there’s, there’s a lot of things. If you did all the things you’d be doing it forever, you know, um, but if you get a clear one clear brand message, right, it can spawn so many things.

You can build a brand, right, a visual brand, it can spawn other messages, you know, yeah, yeah. Just. Keep it simple. If we try and do it all, we just don’t get through it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anybody else?

Attendee: Hi, I just wanted to say, uh, thank you. I found that really encouraging. Um, and I was just kind of laughing to myself how I, that’s when I came in versus now. Um, I’m new, new to the city, and therefore new to the industry here. Um, and like your story starts with even, like, meeting people here. And someone says like, who are you, what are you about?

And I was, um, I came in and I kind of felt like, oh god, I don’t know. I don’t even know how to describe who I am anymore, like, who I’m here in this industry and what my role is here. And I just kind of feel intense coming in and now I’m like, oh, I got this. [00:45:00] That’s

Annabelle: a win!

Alright, I feel like I could ask loads more people, but I’ve got to wrap up. Um, Amy, will I go next? I’ll cue it in. Okay, okay.

Ami: Yes.

Annabelle: We’re

Ami: gonna, we’re gonna, can you, can you do that? For sure, yeah. Yeah, who has a question? It’s right in the

Attendee: back here. Oh hi, um, I love when you talked about the, the whole body coach, how you like created a new category for him.

Cause I feel like that’s something I try to do with my clients. But then I run into like, I feel like giving them something super valuable. And then I’m like, now I want to trademark it and buy all these URLs and get all the social things. And then suddenly it’s like 4, 000 more than that.

Annabelle: Yeah, I

Attendee: will

Annabelle: say that when I presented the whole being coaching to Ian, he literally, he literally messaged me 15 minutes after the meeting went, I’ve just bought all the URLs.

And I was like, hoping [00:46:00] coaching. com isn’t your, your brand. But like, yeah, it is true. But you know, like, also those ideas can keep coming, you know, like, I love that for him. But there’s other things. So, I think, yeah, it doesn’t have to be the whole kit and caboodle. It can be like, yeah, that’s a wonderful gem.

I coined a new phrase, that’s wonderful. I’m gonna coin loads more. You know, you can just keep, you know, it doesn’t have, I made a great one years ago that I love called Connected Capabilities. For, it was for an agency that I needed to reposition from a full service digital agency to a social agency, but they didn’t want to let go of their other bits.

Um, so I said, right, we’ll call them Connected Capabilities. So you’re a social media agency, but you have connected capabilities, connected, like, capabilities connected to social. And, and I loved that, and I also was like, oh, I should do something with it, but there’s more. There’ll be more. Personal[00:47:00] 

Attendee: branding and business branding seems to kind of float in together. It seems like you kind of, if you’re running your business, you have to have personal branding. That is what you, that’s your point.

Annabelle: Well, if you’re the face of your business, if you’re selling, if you’re like, like, I am, I like storytelling. I mean, there’s other people who help me and there’s other collaborators, you know, it exists because of me, you know, so like, if you are the face of your business, then you need a personal brand.

Your business can still have a brand, but it just like, is complimentary.

Oh yeah, so I mean in my case, well they’re complementary, so like in my case, I build brand stories that grow businesses, and my company’s called I Like Storytelling, because I build brand stories, uh, stories, storytelling, and yeah, so it’s, you just look for something that’s a complement, you know, you don’t come up with a personal brand that’s [00:48:00] like, different from, like, in a different wheelhouse from your company, but it would be really strange for that to happen, because you’re part of the, you’re part of the, you are, you are the company, the facelift, yeah.

I wouldn’t, I would like do the process or, or whatever version of the process and not worry too much about what comes out the other side. Cause what will come out will be complimentary. Like you won’t go down a different Avenue. Yeah. Cause sometimes like it can be a little challenge and then it kind of roadblocks.

Or just say, go, take action. Hi.

Attendee: Yeah. So to add on to his questions, Branding and like for self branding as well as company branding, it could be like pretty daunting sometimes, especially in the social media these days where people with hundreds of thousands of followers, right? And if you’re just starting, it might take you years to reach to that point.[00:49:00] 

So what would be your growth hacking strategy for like a startup company? It doesn’t have like those bunch of followers. Should they hire an influencer, a celebrity to be the face of their brands? Or what is, where they should start for a startup

Annabelle: company? Oh, there’s so many things I would need to know to answer that truly.

Because you’re asking me, what is the strategic direction? What should be the strategic direction for this company? There’s so many things. It would depend on the industry that it’s in. It would depend on what the competitors look like. It would depend on what the opportunities were. Um, I would say though, like, to answer what I can, like, starting with what, well, what do you want to do, what are the objectives and what are the metrics, because getting 100, 000 followers may not deliver you more business, you know, so what is the, what is the goal or objective that is going to actually deliver more business to a startup that’s growing?

So I’d probably look at that [00:50:00] first, and then later the mechanics. There’s always lots of mechanics. There’s lots of promotional mechanics, lots of marketing ways and channels. But it’s like, what do we want to achieve? And then how do we get, how do we get there? Yeah,

Attendee: so it’s just like, let’s say in a home renovation business.

Yeah. Well, there are a lot of competitors and they’re doing the same things.

Annabelle: Yeah.

Attendee: Like, they have like Instagram’s page, Facebook, uh, Pinterest page, Twitter, so, how do you really start, like, is it like

Annabelle: Well, you look for a competitive advantage. So you look, you’re saying they’re all doing the same thing, you go and you monitor what they’re all doing, and you, you note the patterns, and then you go, right, how can we do that differently?

And when you find a way to do it differently, then your content stands out. And sometimes that’s just how you create the content. Like recently, I worked with a real estate agent, and she was like, Annabelle, all the real estate agents are on TikTok, and [00:51:00] they’re all doing the same thing. They walk through the house with a camera, and they show everything, and you know.

And I was like, okay, well, what could you do different? And when I did her personal brand strategy, I uncovered that she was also a mortgage broker. So I was like, okay, you’re a mortgage broker too. Well, let’s weave that into your reel. So go and do the walkthrough in the house, but also talk about how much, how much they’ll need to earn to be able to get a mortgage for this amount.

How much down payment they’ll need. So she started to give in little bits of mortgage advice as part of the reel and it took off. So she still did the same thing with the other people, but she looked for like a different, um, Make something to make it unique.

Attendee: So basically you’re saying like, expand your service and your market, where you can like meet people who’s, that might not be directly acquiring your service, but it could be a venue for them to acquire your main service.

Yeah.

Annabelle: I think. Okay, thank

Attendee: you.

Annabelle: Do [00:52:00] it differently. If you’re all doing the same thing. You can say it differently, you can express it differently, you can find a way to tell the same story in a different way. You know, different types of content.

Attendee: Hi Annabelle, I’m Troy from Creative Others, it’s a shameless plug there.

Annabelle: Oh yeah, cheers, and what do you do at a bar company? What do you deliver?

Attendee: So, uh, well, I was just gonna ask you actually about, you talked about you got into public speaking and stuff, and I’ve had the privilege a couple of times to speak, but I’ve been invited to speak, and I’ve absolutely loved it.

And I’m wondering, how do I get more of that? And honestly, I wouldn’t even care about monetizing it. I just love the opportunity, especially to speak to students and stuff. Um, and then the second, I had two questions. Do you think being Irish helps you with the storytelling? Send the

Annabelle: Irishman in the audience.

It’s funny how two Irish people in the audience have spoken. I used to [00:53:00] say we were like a virus. But that didn’t, that wasn’t very, that became very unpopular, you know, for obvious reasons. Um, uh, sorry, first question.

Attendee: So how did you create this opportunity to do this? Oh, to do speaking

Annabelle: events. Yeah, so there are speaking circuits.

Yeah. It’s like, you know, there are, you can build a speaking proposal that’s about you and what you want to talk about and you pitch it to people. Um, but, you can monetize it and there’s people that get into it for just that. I don’t do that because that’s not, I want to share what I do and I want to support people to do more work.

And especially things like this, like Creative Pulse, where I have, you know, personal and professional ties to the wonderful work that’s done here. You know, I just, like. I want to help, um, but, um, I would say think about the places where you think you can give the gift of service, and support [00:54:00] people, and something that will, you’ll feel fulfilled doing, and they’ll get something out of, and then go pitch to them, you know, because, like, it’s nice when there’s, you want it to be like, you know, mutually beneficial, you know, where you’re both in basically, and I can, I can share more with you.

I feel like we’re gonna chat anyway, so like I can, I can share more with you about proposals and things like that, and yeah, yeah.

Attendee: Cool, thanks for your time.

Annabelle: You do pay to do a TEDx talk, just FYI. Oh. You actually pay a lot of money. We probably have enough time for a couple more questions. One more question.

I was like, did we even have time for these?

Attendee: Okay, sorry, where are we? Hi, um, I’m just curious, have you ever worked with an individual? Yeah. Um, who’s, uh, who provides service that are very different and then, um, one ending. So just an example, a little extreme, um, let’s say if someone is like a [00:55:00] skydiving coach Cool!

And, uh, a cook. Oh yeah, wonderful. How do you, how would you approach that?

Annabelle: But that’s what I did with Ian. I mean, Ian was like, I was like, tell me all your talents, tell me what you do. And the list went on and on and on, I couldn’t even give you all of it. And he’s like, and I’m a Reiki hero, let’s work together.

You find a, you find a way to weave it together, you know, you find a beautiful way to weave it together. Um, what I would look for if there are two, um, um, I can’t remember what the opposite, two, not conflicting, not complementary, but two, sorry, two contrasting talents or gaits, right? If there’s two contrasting things, I would actually tease out of the person, like their experience when they do those things.

I would look for a commonality. Because there’s something in them that is going to both of those places. I would also do research with their clients on both sides and look for is there some commonalities or patterns of what people appreciate when they work [00:56:00] with them. And you’ll find there’s something else, like there’s something that joins the two things.

Ami: Alright guys, I know you have more questions. The good news is Annabelle’s not running away. So let’s have a round of applause.