TRP 193: Personal Branding in the Age of Artificial Intelligence with Daveed Wagner

[00:00:10] You're listening to the Rainmaking Podcast, hosted by high-stakes headhunter, author and professional speaker, Scott Love. You're listening to the Rainmaking Podcast, and my name is Scott Love. Thank you for joining me on the show. Our special guest today is Daveed Wagner,

[00:00:31] and we're talking about personal branding, not just personal branding, but personal branding in the age of artificial intelligence. Daveed is a credentialed expert in the area of branding, and he's got some deep insights that I think are going to make a difference for you,

[00:00:45] regardless of the industry in which you work. If you're in the business of getting business, if you're a rainmaker, then this is an episode you definitely want to listen to. Make sure you connect with Daveed. Go to the show notes wherever you hear this podcast,

[00:00:59] and you'll be able to connect with him directly and also get access to some of the offerings that he has right there on his site. As always, this show is sponsored by Leopard Solutions, legal intelligence suite of products, FirmScape and Leopard BI.

[00:01:12] Push ahead of the pack with the power of Leopard. Also, if you're in the recruiting industry, check out The Placement Club. It's a large free online learning community just for recruiters, theplacementclub.com. One good idea can change your life forever.

[00:01:28] And now here's my conversation with my friend, Daveed Wagner. Thanks for listening. Hey, this is Scott Love with the Rainmaking Podcast. Our guest today is Daveed Wagner, and we're talking about using artificial intelligence and personal branding in the age of artificial intelligence.

[00:01:46] Daveed, thanks for joining me on the show. Thank you for having me, Scott. Yeah, this is great. I remember meeting you at the National Speakers Association Conference a few years ago. You've obviously got all that energy that a speaker would have,

[00:01:57] but one thing that I found was really interesting is just this in-depth expertise that you have in the area of personal branding. That's something that every listener can benefit from. Thank you. Let me ask you first, why is personal branding so hot right now?

[00:02:13] Taylor Swift is a personal brand. We're in times where things are changing so much. Technology, AI, remote work, the gig economy. We work with people for years and we've never met them in person. Personal branding becomes very important because personal brand, at its heart,

[00:02:35] is the process of really creating this unique and memorable image about who you are based on your reputation, your trust, and value. Personal branding, all you get is what you see on the Zoom call. All you get is how you hear me through your AirPods or earphones.

[00:02:57] Personal branding is not something new. In fact, a very well-known consultant called Tom Peters, former McKinsey alum, wrote an article many, many years ago called The Brand Called You. This article was in Fast Company where he spoke about the personal branding

[00:03:15] and its power not only as say an employer but also an employee. How do your colleagues see you? How much do they trust you, the reputation you carry? It used to be a time when, for example, we thought that our efforts, education,

[00:03:31] and performance were enough to actually move forward in our career. But you have to add another layer now with so much noise out there. You have to incorporate how you manage your reputation, how you manage your personal brand. If nobody knows you or what you stand for,

[00:03:47] or how your values align with your company values as an employee, how are you going to be on that short list that moves forward in their career? Personal branding has become so popular because there are so many businesses

[00:04:01] and so many companies that have been very successful in building this career based on the first name and the last name, the personal brand. I found what's interesting about six or seven years ago.

[00:04:15] There was this show I was watching. I can't remember the name of it or which one it was. It was a comedy show and one of the jokes one of the actors said was that,

[00:04:22] yeah, my daughter's taking a year off to work on her personal brand and it was really funny. But if you heard that now you'd say, oh, that's a really good idea because it's so important. It's like people don't second guess it. It's you have a personal brand.

[00:04:35] And as you know, I work with a lot of big law firms and individuals, partners, I recruit partners. And what I've seen is that they have to be even more aware. They've got the reputation of their firm that gives them strength,

[00:04:47] but they themselves have to manage that brand and be aware of that also. Yeah, just imagine how many people you meet on a regular basis. Just imagine how many employees you got to sit through.

[00:04:56] And all of a sudden you have to remember based on two words, first name and last name. You have to remember whether you can trust that person. You have to remember the reputation they have. You have to, everything has to boil down to that personal brand.

[00:05:08] Let me ask you this. Do you think people are hypersensitive where, because you've mentioned the words trust and reputation at least twice since we've started. Do you think that if there's anything that happened or let's just say there is a perception of something happening

[00:05:24] that could impact somebody's brand? Even if it wasn't true, that could really hurt someone's brand. Of course. That is since the beginning of time, you know, since by the time you graduated from high school, you're already building your personal brand. In college, you are building your personal brand.

[00:05:40] So every action you take, whether that left or right, any turn you make, you know, in this day and age, it could be easily available public if it is a public thing that happens to you.

[00:05:51] So you have to be very intentional in the way you nurture and build your personal brand. So let me ask you this. Yeah. Let's just say you're working with somebody.

[00:06:00] You're working with a consultant or a coach or a professional that has a service that they want to sell. How would you start by helping them really push out that brand to the market in a way that gets them business?

[00:06:15] What's kind of on your mind when you're working with that person in terms of recommendations that you're going to make? Yeah, so great question. We have our own proprietary framework that answers that exact question. There are just three very important questions that you have to think of.

[00:06:29] The first one is how do you invite people into your narrative? How do you get people excited about what you do? The second one is once they've come in into your ecosystem, how do you engage with them? How do you connect with them?

[00:06:41] How do you dialogue with them through the multiple channels available to you? And third and more important, how do you build a community? How do you support what they do?

[00:06:51] How do you always at the top of the list when it comes to the specific element that you provide to them? Those three things, if you put them together, that is a recipe not only to grow your personal brand but also to grow your business.

[00:07:05] And at the helm of all these things is what we call the personal brand audit. The personal brand audit is a very deep, deep intensive research piece that we do and evaluate people's online presence. So somebody like yourself, Scott Love comes to us and says,

[00:07:22] you know what, David, would you do a full audit of my online presence? Great. You don't have to tell me anything other than if you have a URL, give me your URL or your LinkedIn URL. And what our team does is we scour the internet.

[00:07:34] We look at every little corner from YouTube, social, SEO, everything that's out there about you. And then we'll deliver a big report to you saying, you know what, here are the pieces where your fundamentals that are working,

[00:07:48] your Google, your SEO, your analytics, your search console or those pieces. The most advanced pieces are like, are you building your asset video library on YouTube?

[00:07:58] And then we provide recommendations at the end of this audit as to how some of the things that you could do to improve that, including best practices and an actionable report with two phases. Phase one, things that you have to do right now.

[00:08:11] For example, we found white text on a white background or buttons that are clicking in the wrong way in your website. And the second piece is that faces that need a little more of a long-term care.

[00:08:21] Like what are you doing about your brand and your messaging and your log line? Do you have a call to action strategy, an evergreen strategy and things of that nature? Got it. Got it. So do you think that when someone's really kind of starting to think about this,

[00:08:34] let's say they've been in business for a while, they've been successful but they know they can do better and they think that if they can improve their brand, that's going to help them professionally.

[00:08:42] Should they look at this is the kind of person I want to be seen as? Should they have this sort of image in their mind of how they want to portray themselves to the world? What do you think about that?

[00:08:56] No, the most successful individuals out there, the most successful personal brands are the ones that are fully aligned with who they are. They're authentic, they're transparent and they're trustworthy. Got it. Okay, good. Good.

[00:09:10] How do you think somebody gets to that point to really understand what that brand is? How can I take this authenticity? I always tell people, I can solve anybody's problems except for my own.

[00:09:21] How does somebody really get in their own head to find out what that brand should be or what components they should push out to the market? Well, it starts with professionally with your core competencies, right?

[00:09:34] Who you are and what you're good at. Who you are and what you're good at. Once you have that defined, then you have to encapsulate that in what we call a log line.

[00:09:43] A log line comes from Hollywood. In fact, it's been written about in a couple of books. But the log line is a very simple formula. How do you make a statement where at first you establish very clearly what is the problem that your audience faces?

[00:09:58] Then what is the solution to that problem? And then third is what are the results that your solution yields? You can encapsulate that in your mind and then write it down. That becomes your pitch everywhere. That is the one thing you can tell everybody.

[00:10:15] This is the problem I solve, and this is the solution I used to solve that problem. And these are the results that it yields because people are very driven by results. Most of the time we can say, you know what? There's an issue with this car.

[00:10:28] There's an issue with this house. There's an issue with this bathroom. This is a solution called a plumber called a mechanic. What is the result? What is the transformational piece? What is it that you provide to your audience, to your clients, to your customers

[00:10:42] that they will say, wow, what this person just did for me took me from A to point B? That's great. I like the fact that this is simple but very potent too. Problem, solution, results. Clear. Yeah. Do you think people should they do surveys with clients?

[00:11:00] What do you think as they're kind of looking at really getting real clear on what their brand is? How do they determine what that authentic transparent part of them is? What do you think they should do? Should they do research on this?

[00:11:11] Yeah. I think it starts with evaluating their current online presence because what they have done is they've done all these things over the years in building their brand. They have all these dots, all these marketing and branding dots throughout their history.

[00:11:25] So the first thing they need to do is really look back and say, all right, how have we connected the dots before? And out of all that, how do we want to connect the dots better in the future?

[00:11:37] So it's like what we like to call the stepping on the scale moment. You want to be healthy, you want to let go, you want your pants to fit. But there's that moment when you realize, all right, I want to get right on again.

[00:11:49] I'm going to need to step on that scale. Yeah, right. The scale doesn't like. Right. So once you step on that scale, once you have evaluated through an audit, through a personal brand audit or any other mechanism, be that surveys in-house first and then to your customers,

[00:12:04] clients, vendors, practitioners. Once you have evaluated that, you have to go to the drawing board with your team and say, look, these are the words because words are like filters, right? These are the words out there that are representing who we are.

[00:12:18] We need to prune these in a way that very clearly we can establish the problem we solve, the solution to that problem, and the result that our solution gives. That's great. The problem, solution and results, that's great.

[00:12:30] So what are some pitfalls that you've seen professionals really get tripped up on as they go through this? What are some of the things, the common areas that are pitfalls as they start thinking this way?

[00:12:42] I think time is something that is, you know, for all of us, a perishable asset. So once if you don't have the time to evaluate this, you're not going to do a great job at it. That's number one.

[00:12:54] Number two, I think that I found individuals tap into the wrong resources because there's one thing is branding for a product. One thing is branding for a person, right? Personal branding, a very specific expert in that channel is critical.

[00:13:11] And I also think that resources are typically not available for somebody who is looking to grow that personal brand in a quick way. And most people, you, me included, you know, we tend to look at the short-term view. We all want the six pack. Yeah.

[00:13:31] But it's a short-term narrow view. But we fail to see, all right, how will this reverberate into the future? A year, two years, five years from now. And that has to be aligned with your personal goals as well.

[00:13:43] The way we see it is your personal branding aligned with your marketing planning, you know, marketing strategy. That marketing strategy aligns with your business strategy. Otherwise, how do you measure results, right? Revenue, profit, you know, acquisition costs, whatever you want to call it.

[00:13:55] But more importantly, and this is the part that we miss, is that business goals need to be aligned with your personal goals, right? You paint. Mm-hmm. You see, there's no way for me to know that other than through connecting with you on social media

[00:14:10] and really making it a point to build a relationship with you. Exactly right. Now, I am in your space and you are in my space genuinely, authentically. You are the person that shows us. God love. Yeah.

[00:14:23] So has someone or have you seen people where they have in their idea? These are my personal goals. This is how I think of myself in terms of my personal brand. I'm going to start pushing this out to the market.

[00:14:36] But it really might be something else where they thought they were going to be this type of professional, but really they're not seen as that person. People in the market see them for something else. Have you seen that before?

[00:14:48] Like kind of a conflict that some professionals have when they start doing this? Yeah, I see it all the time through our personal brand audits. That gives us insights into things that you might not be able to see, that I might not be able to see.

[00:15:01] What is it is a factor of time, right? You started something five years ago with a specific set of keywords. Your business and your services and the value you offer evolve, but you cannot catch up to the changes that need to happen throughout your online presence.

[00:15:18] So if you fast forward five years, then you are positioned in the marketplace as somebody that does something, but in your mind you do something else. Yeah. That's normal. Yeah. Well, like what you said earlier, personal brand at its heart is creating a unique, memorable image

[00:15:37] of who you are based on reputation, trust and value. Absolutely. How do we make this a memorable image? And in terms of unique, what do you think are the things that people see as unique? Is it personality? Is it credentials?

[00:15:52] Let me ask you first about what are points of uniqueness that you've seen have caused some people to really, wow, they pop. Their brand pops. Let me ask you that first. What are some elements or attributes that are unique for professional?

[00:16:04] Of course, the most straightforward one and simple one really, which I'm sure your audience, our audience can identify very quickly is when a personal brand or somebody starts putting out their things that are too professionally put together, too meticulously crafted, but ultimately look like a nap.

[00:16:22] They look like corporate, right? Yeah. You and I know that authenticity is not perfect. We are not perfect. Capiche? So now you have to think to yourself, who am I and what do I have to show across channels through your word, through your newsletters, through your speeches?

[00:16:44] How do I want to position myself? Because if you are not true to who you are and remain authentic, then you'll start showing up as somebody who you are not. Yeah. And that inhibits a relationship, build on trust. Okay. Got it. Got it.

[00:17:02] So as somebody decides, I want to make this an intentional effort. I've never thought about this before, but it's a different kind of world than it was three years ago even. And I want to take advantage of the social media that is out there

[00:17:17] and the more general acceptance by mature professionals at what TikTok is linked in especially. Yes. That they say, I want to do this. And as they go forward, let's say they take your audit and I want to

[00:17:29] hear more about that too in a little bit and we'll put links and other information on the show notes for everybody listening. But as they go forward, how often should they go back and look at what their initial objectives are?

[00:17:41] How often should it be every once in a while? Should it be every month, every quarter? What do you recommend people should really kind of evaluate their progress on the path of what their goals are related to this brand?

[00:17:54] There's no set schedule, but we are message our content, our deliverables, our services evolve. The audiences evolve, the cultural actions evolve, the direct pitch evolves. And as it evolves, when it evolves, there are three things they need to keep in mind.

[00:18:12] Number one, if you are set on the new direction or maybe a second part to a particular service or a particular value proposition that you have, the first thing you do is you clean up your social media profiles. I do recommend having all of those look the same.

[00:18:31] Your profiles being your link, what you do, again, what problem you solve, what solution you provide to the problem, what results you yield, just having that encapsulated in a very, very specific way and making sure that all your social media profiles say the same thing

[00:18:49] and point to the same place. That would be number one. Number two, as you move forward, connect with the right people. If you're an employee and you have gained this great relationship with a manager, then connect with them on social media. That will take you far in life.

[00:19:08] I've built my business on just the relationships I have built over the last couple of decades. And you know what? No, I don't know everybody's name and phone number, but they're on social media. And when I see them, I genuinely and authentically engage

[00:19:21] with their content because I want them to know that I'm around if they ever need anything. And number three, provide value. If you put something out there that you wouldn't share yourself, then put it out there. Put value out there that people will share, shareable content only.

[00:19:39] So tell me a time where you worked with someone. This is professional. They did the audit. They made changes. What do you think happened in their arc of who they were before and what they did and what results they achieved? Yeah.

[00:19:54] So there's been a number of instances in this case. In one particular one, for example, we identified very quickly that our client had not only a great personality and great persona, but they were great on camera. So we said, you know what?

[00:20:09] Let's build a show, a TV show, a serious episode show that we can put on YouTube as a series and build your asset library and make sure that it is optimized in a way that anytime people are looking for

[00:20:26] a particular set of keywords, this content would come up. And that gave them the visibility that they needed to parlay into the rest of their businesses. And building that, yeah, especially nowadays, vertical video is everywhere. Arguably, with six billion mobile users, arguably a mobile device is the most,

[00:20:49] is the number one way to deliver a personal experience with somebody and create a connection. And video, especially today, it's so easy to produce and so effective as you grow your brand. It's amazing how much credibility YouTube has. Of course. Why wouldn't it? Yeah.

[00:21:08] In our family, hey, how do you do this? I don't know. I'm a YouTube. I go to YouTube. Yes. My wife and I talk about that. What do we do about this? I don't know. Let's go to YouTube. Yeah.

[00:21:18] And what's interesting, I even did a seminar for people in the legal industry, law firm recruiting professionals that are inside of law firms. And I told them that you need to have a separate careers focused YouTube channel with video testimonials

[00:21:31] and put that out there and promote the YouTube channel because that has more credibility than your law firm's website if you have that on the site. People are going to go to YouTube. Oh, I believe YouTube. More than this other 100-year-old institution's website. Exactly.

[00:21:45] And look at YouTube as having all the answers. Yeah. You know, I like to say this. It is not a popularity contest, but it really is a popularity contest. That's right. That's funny. That's great. So let me bring this home then.

[00:21:59] If the people listening want to get started on these ideas that you've shared and if you could summarize it in three action steps, David, what would those three action steps be? Yeah. Number one, I would say evaluate your current online presence. Use tools available to you out there.

[00:22:16] We have a personal brand audit, which is very robust that I would love to share with your audience if they see value in it. Once they review all the content out there, I'll be more than happy to help with them along the way.

[00:22:28] Make sure that number two, clean up your social media profiles. We tend to have different messaging throughout those so that definitely is a big number two. And always provide value. Always provide value. That's great. Well, David, thank you for being here and sharing your

[00:22:44] expertise and tell us more about your services and your offerings and we'll put any links that you mentioned. We'll put those on the show notes. But what are the things that you have that you do that you'd like our listeners to know?

[00:22:55] You know, we've been doing this for almost two decades now and we are very particular about being the experts at personal branding along the way the best practices we have grown from the personal branding arena are just vast. And we have just put all of that together into

[00:23:13] the personal brand audit. So the personal brand audit really is the starting place for us to get to know who's out there looking to achieve big things and we'd like to come along as partners and help them do just that and scale up their brand. That's great, David.

[00:23:28] We'll put that link on the show notes. We'll also put your LinkedIn link and also your website link on our show notes. Thanks for being here today and being a great guest and sharing this wisdom with us. I'd love to have you back on the show, David.

[00:23:39] My pleasure. Anytime. Thank you for listening to the Rain Making podcast. For more information about our recruiting services for international law firms, visit our website at attorneyssearchgroup.com. To inquire about having Scott speak at your next convention, conference, sales meeting, or executive retreat, visit therainmakingpodcast.com