S3 E8: Build Your Personal Brand in 1 Hour a Day, The 1-Hour Formula That Actually Works

0:00Welcome to Brand You, the ultimate personal branding podcast. I'm Caz Grant. And I'm Toby Lee. Together, we're here to help demystify personal branding. And to make it accessible and effective for everyone. Follow along as we guide you through creating your own personal branding journeys. So, let's get started. Let's Brand You.

0:25Welcome back to the Brand You podcast, proudly sponsored by Sparkhouse. In today's episode, we're going to be going through the one hour personal branding formula. So how to build your personal brand in under one hour. So I think there's lots of people out there, isn't there, Toby, that probably think of personal branding and building a personal brand and they think, I haven't got time to do that. Yeah, and I totally get it because I often feel like that. I'm like, where am I going to find time to do content, posts, you know, make sure I'm being seen. but then also the ideation side of thinking about what's what to come and what to include takes time as well so I think it's something that people kind of maybe like when they chat to us say how do you find the time to do it it's something that they can't do when they're in their own business everyone's in the same position so hopefully today we can give a few tips that are just gonna help people realize okay it's it's not as heavy duty as it may sound like it is um you know we've got these tools in place we've got a little bit of structure that can just help to do it in bit parts and and it's at the end of the day we've we've mentioned before it's the consistency of doing this of putting that messaging out there again and again so that you're building that that presence in that brand it's not a case of it needs to i need to sit down for block out two days to do something for my personal brand little bits is is more useful yeah yeah and i think we're we're pitching this more at those solopreneurs people that have just started businesses kind of thing aren't we as well so we're pitching this to people that will build relatively small personal brands at the start if you want to build a massive personal brand beyond all of the channels do absolutely everything hone everything to look perfect as well then that's like why I exist with Quirk to help people do that but most people aren't a marketing team and don't have marketing experience and those skills so we're talking about helping those kind of people aren't we just individuals with something to share with the world with a goal in mind for it how can you do that and i do think that there's an easy way that people can do that in under an hour a day maybe even half an hour a day and what i would say to our audiences as well because i was giving a talk the other day at the uni to a load of physio uh grads about their personal brands and they're obviously they're busy they've got jobs they're studying um they're doing their master's degree like that is time consuming i'm not going in there saying you must create a personal brand and they're like I've got no time I got them to all take out their phones and go into their phone settings and see how much screen time they spend on the apps ouch ouch there was one person in the room she kind of went oh saw how much put it back in her pocket and then wouldn't tell the room but her friend next to her was like eight hours she did eight hours on it and it's like wow like when we think about we've got to be really intentional at the moment of how we spend our time we're living in this attention economy aren't we and we want to put into that attention economy by creating and being a part of it because we want something in return as well but we don't we can't let the platforms and social media take over our life that much so that we're consuming more than we're creating like what most of us are taking in other people's personal brands feeding into their online ecosystem giving them our attention our money our you know our energy but we can do a little bit of that but what about we flip it so that we're getting something back from it as well it's almost better to be kind of proactive with putting stuff out there than I think the more you consume content, I think sometimes it can be even more confusing as to where you start.

4:36You know, you might look at other businesses on LinkedIn or other individuals and go, oh, that video they've done is great. Next person, that photo they've posted or that valuable, you know, written post. I don't know what I'm going to do now. Like there's all this great stuff out there. I don't know what I can do that's going to contribute and sit in there and work. whereas actually if you were just thinking about yourself and what you want to say and just in isolation not clouding it with what's going on already out there you've got a better chance of dropping something in that is going to be valuable and not necessarily competitive but we want to stand out don't we yeah yeah the more you spend time consuming other people's content the the harder it's almost going to be for you because again you've really got to put the blinkers on and stay in your own lane like don't let left and right and what they're doing because it doesn't inspire us most of the time it's great so sometimes I go online to get inspiration yeah and an hour later I'm like I've come off with no inspiration I'm as confused as ever and I'm actually just wasted an hour of my time and I know this stuff right it's designed to suck us in the algorithm is designed to keep us on there wanting more getting more so once you're on it's like it's hard to control yourself and stay in that lane so we need to think about like our day and where in that day then instead of jumping on our social media platforms can we not go on them or go on them but do very specific things and maybe set alarms and timers so that it jolts us out if we do get a bit carried away from it yeah and practice some of these things that we're going to share in this episode because i think once you get intentional once you switch it from consuming to creating more then social media isn't bamboozling you confusing you taking up your whole life it's a strategic tool that you can use to get yourself moving forward whatever you know smash whatever goals that you have in there so um i throw in there as well i think like if we're talking about like say linkedin as a platform independently there are creators and there are followers i think people naturally sit in they either go on linkedin just to see what other people have done and comment and support and like and then there are other people that are leading the conversations and so on and i think it's not wrong to sit in one of those depending on what your aims are i'd say i naturally sit on the creative side i spend very little time actually commenting on other people's posts and reaching out and then I feel bad because I think when I'm making connections I need to be supporting people's content and adding value where I can but primarily I'm thinking if I've only got half an hour today to do something is it more beneficial for me to be sharing something or choosing to use that time to connect so that's what we're going to kind of delve a little bit more into yeah and maybe it's a mix of both yeah do you You know, it's being, again, intentional setting an alarm or something.

7:50So you're not spending too much on one than the other. It's very intentional with your blocks of time. Yeah. So the kind of under an hour formula that I kind of share with our audience is I block it down into 20 minute slots. So the first 20 minutes will be connecting. yeah so 20 minutes getting on my platforms trying to find people who are like my ideal audience or people that I want to connect with and how do you do that how do you depends what platform you're on but let's use LinkedIn as an example because I do think LinkedIn as a platform and a tool at the moment is probably one of the most underlooked but one of the most the best ones to get on if you are starting a personal brand at the moment because it can it can do so much and open doors to so much opportunity it is like networking in person online um so if we're looking at linkedin literally there's the connections button at the top so you can open that out and you can either search for people so for yourself you have a photography business within lincoln so most people would come to your studio i'd imagine you'd want most people from the lincoln area as one of your kind of um idle audience ticks if you like obviously you can do further afield and and that's fine but if you wanted to focus on lincoln you could search lincoln and then that would bring up people in lincoln or you could search um i don't know what what are the reasons that people come to you for a headshot for um i guess depending on what their position is whether they run their own business or whether they're in other businesses it would tend to be like kind of like the marketing leads that would be booking me to come in and do their team headshots so you want to find yeah certain roles yeah so certain roles if you've got the marketing connections that are then going to book you down the line get connecting with them and um you know warming them up if you like plug them into your online world so that they can start seeing what you are all about it's again it's no like and trust isn't it that's what we're building for our personal brands so that first connection piece is is no yeah like are they gonna know us so that can they see us can they can you plug them into your world so yes we've talked about clarity before in previous episodes again once you're clear on your ideal audience you can start to kind of hunt for them in those hunts oh it's such a bad word isn't it hunt for them online seek them out yeah lure them in lure them in hunt yeah personal branding bread sprinkle it yeah um different platforms are different again if i was going to go onto instagram for example and hunt for my my prey on instagram such a hard one find my people on instagram yeah connect i gotta get that that word out but if i was going to look for those on instagram hashtags you could use hashtags so location um Lincoln Lincolnshire um again like uh marketing that kind of thing um or again is it like are you selling when I think of my other business um selling protein powders or whatever you're selling a physical product people that go to the gym take protein powders so I want gym people so am I searching for gyms in Lincolnshire and then searching through their followers and connecting that way and stuff i think it's harder to connect with new people on instagram and other platforms again linkedin makes it very easy for you to connect with other people once you've started connecting with a certain type of person or a certain industry or a certain area on on linkedin it'll start blocking them off into um people that you've searched for before so it'll bring that up and you've searched for lincoln people before it'll bring up other people you may know in lincoln right okay other people you may know in marketing so eventually it understands the people that you're looking for you no longer need to search that then it'll just pop up on your on your connections page um but with instagram again you're going to have to literally search for them and a lot of people's profiles on instagram are private and it makes it very hard for you to go in like a story comment on a story follow them um they've got their privacy settings set quite quite high on there so it is a difficult one i think on instagram that's why i like linkedin yeah it makes it so much easier to connect with the people that you want to connect with and also with not even the connection part of it with people on LinkedIn only one percent are showing up yeah on LinkedIn and creating so relatively like the spread of noise on that platform yeah you might think oh gosh there's loads of there but percentage wise there's not yeah way more on Instagram or another platform are showing up and trying to cut through that everyone's sharing their own way yeah it's difficult but cutting through on LinkedIn is a bit easier so cutting through the noise and then also then connecting with people so much easier um with the connections part of it as well there's something I was going to say oh yeah got it um with the connections part of it as well so sometimes when we think of LinkedIn it can ask you do you want to send a note with this connection request and when people get stuck at that point as well they're like should I send a note should I not yeah um some people still send a note like by my staff or like you know it's stop it um if there is anything on their profile that you have seen that you can connect with that you can say oh I saw your post on this yeah thought that was a great idea I'd love to follow you to learn more about whatever their world is if you can send something genuine like that yeah that will open it up do it send it sometimes you're connecting with people that look like your ideal but they've only got a partial profile right you don't actually know if they would be or not and they don't know because they don't know you either maybe just send them a connection request without a note because they've given you nothing they're not creating they've given you nothing almost to go on apart from name and maybe their job title or location and that fits with who you want to speak to but you don't actually know yet so um yeah I wouldn't worry too much about the note side of it but if you can it's just that added touch that will help someone say yes or no to you and do you know what if they don't want to connect with you back it's okay we're finding the ones that would want us yeah we're finding our tribe so don't worry too much about that and I think sometimes on LinkedIn as well people aren't as active on the platform so you might send a few connection requests they might not accept straight away so realize that it's not maybe going to be an instant thing all the time might be a week two weeks down the line that they then go on their linkedin and check so yeah don't be too caught up in that so we're connecting making some outreach purposeful outreach as well to try and build our and grow our audience that's our kind of like first target if we if we get some some time to use building our personal brand yeah what are we going to do with the with the rest of the time if we have it once we've connected we then want to converse with our audience so 20 minutes or again if you've got less time less time but 20 minutes just engaging with the people that you're already there in your online world so that could be again going through on select profiles that you've identified are people that you really want to speak to you go on their profile you have a little look at what they've last posted last few posts can I put a thoughtful comment on that can i start the communication ball rolling or again like do i want to warrant a personal message and send them something directly based off of what they've they've suggested and they've created and they've put out to the world like we want to start conversations with people because it's okay that we've connected with them but they're not necessarily going to see us um unless we are again giving to their platforms a bit and and engaging with their content again it's going to be easy if they are sharing content harder if they're not so you will find a flow with with who you can sort of talk to and who you maybe can't I suppose the other benefit of the conversing is if you're commenting on on posts you're not only supporting what they've shared and you know getting yourself on their radar you're also have been seen by other people you know all their other connections yeah and the more you spread yourself around on various in various groups and circles um the better that's going to be for people being directed to you and then maybe inbound connection requests coming your way absolutely and with platforms like linkedin again you can get quite a lot of impressions based off of your comment so yes you get eyes on with impressions of your content you also get eyes on with your comments as well so you're no longer just having to create nowadays it's the conversations that are happening as well which is why it's so important for you when you're creating to ask questions of your audience and put those calls to action which make people comment on yours because again you can spark those conversations and then you'll get opened up to their audiences as well so powerful yeah because if you're after a specific person or type of person they're probably going to know another five or ten of those kind of people so you're maximizing the spread of your ideal audience really aren't you through talking to them and opening up those those lines of communication this is probably though the conversing the point where you want to set an alarm because it's probably the easiest time to get sucked into the scroll hole and actually you come off an hour five hours later you've achieved nothing you've talked to none of your ideal audience and you've just liked dog photos or some rescue animals have been on there and you got sucked into that so that's the the time that could potentially be be taken away from you yeah what i'd probably say with this is those two are the most important things to do each day if you can do them and if you can do 10 minutes on each of those do 10 minutes so that's 20 minutes of your day better than nothing yeah you're warming it up you're getting out there you're getting visible and if you can do 15 minutes of each of those great if you can do half an hour of each and then under and out whatever time frame that you've got to give to this give to this and then that's you like yeah your visibility maximized on the platform you're giving and then you will receive from that as well yeah so for those of you who don't know headshot toby studio is based here in spark house in lincoln they offer flexible office spaces business mentoring and even have virtual offices if you're not quite ready for a full-time desk as a sole trader and a photographer with lots of equipment it was really important i found somewhere that had space for me that was affordable so that i had plenty of room to grow my business in a way that was scalable and sparkhouse may just be the perfect solution too for you get in touch today by emailing sparkhouse at lincoln.ac.uk and you'll also find our email address in the show notes below yeah i think what's really nice is you've broken it down in a way there that means whatever time you have there's always something that you you can be doing because I find from a productivity point of view it's quite difficult I might like say go to put something onto LinkedIn then get distracted by going oh what's this so-and-so's posted oh I better comment on that oh who's that person that's commented click on them I'm going to send them a connection you know and then you end up down this world and then you can easily go oh that was such a waste of time And it's not, you're doing the things that we're, where this episode is about, you know, you're connecting, you're conversing, but it's distracting from the task that you originally set out to do.

20:21If you're as easily distracted as I am, just hoping LinkedIn is enough. Um, so in kind of just factoring in this time, you're, you're almost buttoning it going, that is when I'm doing these parts and you can, you know, save yourself for that part of your day, whenever you block out your diary but also know that when you're there you're ultra productive in doing it um i know someone who blocks out the first hour of every day and the last hour of every day for business development stuff that's when they get their emails done yeah so that throughout the day because you i'm sure everyone will be able to relate to this you set off going right i'm gonna start the day in my inbox bam done it i've replied to everyone and then just as you go to move on something else ping ping ping ping everyone's replied and you think i better do this and then you're just stuck in back and back back and forth conversations you know um so yeah just trying to kind of time block it out i think really helps doesn't it make sure it gets done as well make sure it gets done yeah and and everybody gives social media a bad rep and and is hates it because of the time wasting element of it but like you say no one gives their emails a bad rep no no one's like oh no i don't want to do emails because emails suck my time out of me you have to do email you have to do yeah out there has to be that communication for you to achieve what you need to achieve so so it has to happen whether that's emails direct messages comments networking and speaking to actual humans picking up the phone whatever like you wouldn't ignore the phone and the emails so why are you ignoring the social media side of it yeah um so it's not necessarily a bad thing it's just we need to try and focus more and this will take some practice not to get sucked into the squirrel hole and that's why i always say an alarm is such a simple thing it just jolts you and you're like okay got distracted there a bit that's fine tomorrow i'll do a bit better focus time again 15 minutes boom if you don't set an alarm you could be on there for hours at a time because that's what the platform's designed to do it is designed to hook you in for that long so we said um personal branding an hour or under an hour so there is a last section to this but I think you can either block time out and do this in advance or you can do it sort of almost daily and add it into this power hour of personal branding if you like and that is to create so again you're putting your we did storytelling the other week you're putting your story your your narrative your content out to the world so that again you can get your point across your value across people can start to like and trust you through that then so you can either again sit down 20 minutes so we've got 20 minutes to um connect 20 minutes to convert converse and then 20 minutes to um create but again you might want to sit down once a month for one afternoon and create all of that then for the next month I don't know what your schedule looks like I do it once a week so I'll sit down on a Monday at some point when I'm feeling creative sometimes I flip it round so that I'm in that zone yeah create for the next week and then that's all scheduled and So then my daily things is just my half an hour, really, or my 40 minutes of connecting and conversing.

23:55So that's great. Once that's done, it's done. But if you're going to go daily, then, yeah, think about the creation side of it. Like, what can you create that will then go out tomorrow and again, help talk to your audience? But again, you include those calls to action to it so that I'm not the buy my thing calls to action. yeah the conversational course for action so you're then when you open it the next day to converse with people you've already got some things to start conversing with because they commented on your posts as well yes yeah yeah so again you're sparking those conversations you're starting those things you're also warming your audience up to talk to you they can talk to you about nothing sales related and buying your thing when it comes to you then putting out something to buy your thing they're more likely to speak to you about that yeah because they've already been speaking to you about lots of different things it's not scary anymore you're not going to trap them into a sale yeah that's it yeah so this week's actionable step we want you to factor in your power hour into your diary so it's a really simple one compared to other action steps we've had because it's a simple yet easily overlooked thing to do.

25:06If you block this in your diary, there is much more chance that you are actually going to get it done. And it's something that most people will be happy to just leave at the bottom of the list. I can do that tomorrow and then it becomes tomorrow and then it becomes tomorrow. So have a look through your diary this week. What time of each day would work for you to go, you know what, I'm going to block out an hour or half hour to get some connecting conversing and creating done follow along the brand new podcast on spotify and apple podcast and we're also on youtube so you catch all of the next upcoming episodes we also now have an instagram channel as well brand new podcast so go give that a follow and also if you have any questions any burning personal branding questions to ask us please pop us a DM and message us through there and we will answer them in upcoming episodes.

25:59And a big thank you as always to our sponsors of the podcast, Spark House. Here's to branding new.