#5 — Overcoming Creative Gremlins, Personal Brand, Your Voice is Your Power

Overcoming creative gremlins

Each month, I go through a lit­tle cycle with pod­dy episodes and it goes some­thing like this:

1. Catch up with my guest

2. Get excited

3. Prep for the episode

4. Record

5. Edit

6. Stress about putting it up, some­times won­der ‘what could’ve been’

7. Post

8. Receive pos­i­tive feedback

9. Take away learn­ings and messages

The episode with Vic­to­ria was no dif­fer­ent, albeit with a ‘height­ened’ point 6.

Bru­tal truth be told, as a pod­cast host, this episode was not my finest work.

I was ner­vous AF, my brain was­n’t work­ing (it was just after 7am and I had a ter­ri­ble sleep), I fum­bled, peri­od­i­cal­ly went blank and I felt I did­n’t go near as deep as I want­ed on the top­ics we covered.

I even had a dig at myself at how ‘dumb’ my Aussie accent sound­ed com­pared to North Amer­i­can. Yep.

I did not want to post the episode, such as my own self-doubt that it ‘was­n’t good enough’.

The con­trast was all the more appar­ent (in my head) because Vic­to­ria was pol­ished, knowl­edge­able and articulate…plus what a pro­file and following!

The night before it went up, I was pac­ing and mop­ing — my dog was look­ing at me fun­ny and my wife thought I was los­ing my marbles.

And yet this nar­ra­tive, this wall that I had cre­at­ed was…imaginary. What I thought hap­pened in my head was either way overblown or unno­tice­able to oth­ers, or just plain BS.

Sure, I could’ve done bet­ter, but:

1. It’s not about me, it’s about my guests, their key mes­sages, what the audi­ence take away 

2. My own gold­en rule is, nev­er com­pare your­self to oth­ers, because your sto­ries and expe­ri­ences are nev­er the same, and its just real­ly unhealthy

3. Get over it — learn from it and do bet­ter next time!

Since then, I’ve received awe­some feed­back rein­forc­ing the val­ue of this episode from Israel to the US to Down Under. 

I’m grate­ful for this feed­back from my loy­al fans…I put on a brave face and ‘show up’, but some­times we all need a lit­tle exter­nal rein­force­ment to keep us on our path.

We’re only human!

Personal Branding

Mov­ing on, we touched on many inter­est­ing top­ics in our episode, but i’ll choose to dis­sect one in more detail here — that of one’s ‘per­son­al brand’.

I’ve tra­di­tion­al­ly thought per­son­al brand­ing only applies to influ­encers, pub­lic speak­ers, thought lead­ers, some­times entrepreneurs.

Not so!

Per­son­al brand­ing is actu­al­ly impor­tant, vital even, for everyone’s pro­fes­sion­al pro­file. Yes, even in the cor­po­rate world. 

Why? Here’s a few thoughts… 

👉 Dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and stand­ing out: With so many peo­ple vying for the same jobs and oppor­tu­ni­ties, hav­ing strong per­son­al brand­ing can help you dif­fer­en­ti­ate your­self. By show­cas­ing your strengths, skills, and accom­plish­ments, you can estab­lish your­self as an expert in your field and get noticed.

👉 Pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment and growth: Per­son­al brand­ing is an ongo­ing process that requires you to keep assess­ing your skills and goals. By doing this, you can iden­ti­fy areas where you need to improve and work towards devel­op­ing your exper­tise and rep­u­ta­tion. By focus­ing on your per­son­al brand, you can increase your chances of suc­cess and enhance your career prospects.

👉Net­work­ing: A strong per­son­al brand can also help you con­nect with oth­er pro­fes­sion­als in your indus­try. By high­light­ing your skills and exper­tise, you can attract new oppor­tu­ni­ties and build rela­tion­ships with like-mind­ed folks. This can lead to valu­able col­lab­o­ra­tions, men­tor­ships, and oth­er career-boost­ing relationships.

Next is ‘the how’ to build a strong per­son­al brand? 

I’ve list­ed Victoria’s main points below but you can listen/watch for the whole lot here:

👉 Select your sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise, where you become a trust­ed author­i­ty on who you are and how it links back to your top­ic of choice

👉 What are you pas­sion­ate about and how does that come through with the top­ic you wish to con­nect on?

👉 What makes you dif­fer­ent, your unique sell­ing points, your val­ue prop?

👉 What do you want to be known for, what’s your legacy?

Hav­ing reflect­ed on this fur­ther, and doing some more research, i’d also add:

👉 Stay authen­tic. Don’t try to be some­one you’re not or adopt a per­sona that does­n’t feel gen­uine. Instead, focus on high­light­ing your unique strengths and per­spec­tives to cre­ate a strong, authen­tic per­son­al brand.

👉 Opti­mize your medi­um. What will you use to ignite your audi­ences and share exper­tise? Be it a newslet­ter, LinkedIn, Slack, Insta­gram, blog posts etc

👉 Stay con­sis­tent with your brand mes­sage. This helps to build a cohe­sive and rec­og­niz­able brand that peo­ple will asso­ciate with you

👉 Walk the walk. Your actions will speak loud­er than your words, con­sid­er align­ing and show­cas­ing your actions with your content

Where can this lead us?

Well, more mon­ey will always be wel­comed. Good ✅

Exper­tise, promi­nence, rep­u­ta­tion, con­nec­tions are oth­ers. Doublegood ✅✅ 

But for me, the most impor­tant thing is a feel­ing of inner sat­is­fac­tion and true con­nec­tion to my sense of high­er pur­pose. It’s nour­ish­ing the soul and cre­at­ing a force for good by help­ing to ignite and inspire people’s think­ing. Dou­ble­plus­good ✅✅✅✅, to quote my favourite book, 1984. 

To be per­fect­ly hon­est, i’m still try­ing to fig­ure it all out for myself.

I’m mere months into hav­ing a rel­a­tive­ly pub­lic per­sona and I still feel like a new­born calf, stum­bling around mak­ing sense of who I real­ly am and what i’m bring­ing to the world.

But that’s ok, because the jour­ney is there to be expe­ri­enced not just the destination.

It’s nev­er too late to start build­ing your per­son­al brand…making the start is prob­a­bly the hard­est bit. Once you get going you can tend to it like a lit­tle veg­gie patch and with some TLC and care­ful­ly-applied effort, some­thing good should happen.

Using your voice for good

Before I wrap this up, I want to pay trib­ute to Vic­to­ria and the voice that she brings to the world.

Her ori­gin sto­ry was har­row­ing to lis­ten to. She climbed steep per­son­al moun­tains ear­ly in life, over­come some pret­ty insane adversities.

It made me think, nev­er under­es­ti­mate the strength of human spir­it and what we’re tru­ly capa­ble of.

As Vic­to­ria elo­quent­ly put it, ‘your voice is your power’.

And what a force for good her voice is with her advo­ca­cy work for the LGBTQIA+ com­mu­ni­ty, women and minori­ties in business. 

It real­ly makes me con­sid­er what i’m using my voice for, for whom and to what end.

Words mat­ter and actions mat­ter — so let’s do bet­ter and be better!

May suc­cess be with you.

💙 💚

Lis­ten to episode -> https://www.dancingwithdoubt.com/podcast/5‑victoria-pelletier-becoming-unstoppable-personal-branding-dei-ai-on-leadership/

Watch episode on YouTube -> https://youtu.be/tRYawNdfc20