S3 E9: New Year Special - A Year in Personal Branding: What 2025 Taught Us (and What to Expect in 2026)

0:00If you're starting a business or just want a space that helps you focus and grow, then you will want to check out Sparkhouse at the University of Lincoln. It's right in the heart of the city with creative energy and practical support. They've got flexible office spaces, specialist business mentoring with physical tenancies. And they even have virtual office options if you're not quite ready for a full-time desk. Having supported over a thousand businesses since opening, Spark House has a track record for helping startups succeed. If you need an office space in Lincoln, email sparkhouse at lincoln.ac.uk and check out the show notes for that email address to get in touch.

0:42Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Brand You podcast, the very last podcast episode of 2025. And what a year it has been and we both hope it's been a real prosperous year for you growing your personal brands. to mark a special we're going to be reviewing our top three episodes and as well as looking at what is to come in 2026 to help you with your personal brand so out of all our podcasts this year Kaz what was the top performing I feel like we should have written down like our little what we thought it might be and then see what I know right because I don't think I would have thought it would have been this one okay if I hadn't looked at the stats or the analytics from it But looking at the stats and the analytics, our top performing podcast from this season was personal branding for introverts.

1:34Okay. Yeah. So we've got a lot of introverts out there that are quite interested. Hello, everybody. Hiding, but slowly. Slowly coming out of the woodwork. Like that. Okay. We'll want to come out. We'll want to come out. We'll want to come out. Yeah. How do you get yourself forward? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it is a maybe speaking to people out in the wild when we do. like there is a lot of fear and a lot of people that aren't confident with putting themselves out there so maybe that makes sense because maybe they are a bit more introverted possibly you know the extroverts are out there they're chucking themselves out there they're doing it they're they're getting out there they're not worrying at all are they but maybe some of the other people are holding back a bit yeah and I think what was great about that episode was when we were sharing about how being authentic is your superpower so if you are an introvert that's okay and and use that and be that introverted type of person even on camera if you can or in your posts or how you're sharing yourself because again people are going to meet you in person so if you're trying to be larger than life and then they meet you in person it's gonna be like hold on you're not like this really and also people will connect with you because you're not the only introvert on the planet yeah so other introverts will also be connected to you and be inspired by you as well and also I think I may be a bit extroverted but even I love an introvert because it gives me that like oh that's quite a time watching an introvert it's like it's there's no stress there's no like high cortisol levels being released it's just calming it's very calming it's soothing it's quite nice it's like a mini holiday break watching an introvert in the nicest way like i love it i mean everyone's noisy on social media do you mean there's loud forceful presences out there in terms of personal brands and actually yeah embracing what it is that makes you different is so it's far greater than trying to match them or compete especially when that's not not you and not your personal brand and what were we talking about before in the last episode the law of attraction and the energetics if that is not you trying to be that to your audience wow that mismatch it won't land so then toby we've done the top performing episode of the year what about the second top performing so coming in second i wasn't expecting this one either was how to grow an army of loyal followers which this episode I remember finding quite interesting because everyone thinks about growth don't they how do I make my audience bigger bigger bigger I want to reach more people rather than focusing on if that audience isn't the right group of people it's meaningless to an extent like yeah you're getting your brand out there but you're not getting them in front of people who are going to want to purchase from you work with you whatever the service or product is that you offer yeah and have it that's the thing like for yourself you're in Lincoln there's no point in you creating a massive personal brand that's sharing in Australia or the United States because they're never going to come here and get your services so concentrating less on on the follower numbers but maybe more about impact and impacting the right people isn't it and i'm going to use this as a segue you'll enjoy this speaking of people around the globe we do have spotify and apple podcast listeners around the globe and it shows us a little dot on the map so we'd love to hear from you if you've come across the brand new podcast and you are finding this valuable get in touch and let us know where you are what you're up to and what you're taking from this yeah we've got instagram now haven't we so at brand new podcast so message us on there um and also we're talking about this from probably our perspective being in the uk but actually if you are further afield have you got any questions from further afield that we might not have thought of before that again we can research we can look into we can cover in further episodes as well the other thing that we can go back on to for the follower post and building an army of loyal followers actually maybe you don't need to so much nowadays because you can have 5 ,000 followers on a platform, but one of your posts could reach millions of people still.

5:55So actually follower numbers doesn't mean that you're going to get more eyes on your posts now. You can get eyes on your posts if you're a smaller creator too. So there's less onus on that nowadays and more actually on, again, creating that impact through your content and getting the right stuff out there to the right people. And then that will get more eyeballs on it. third top performing podcast of this season was is your personal brand future proof and i think that is a great topic actually and i think as a as a world and as a digital world especially with that buzzword at the moment ai coming in everything is changing and is about to change rapidly yeah so i think trying to learn more about the changes that are coming about how can you utilize that potentially to help your growth yeah because i do think that actually i i am i'm nervous for ai because obviously like there's uncertainty to it we don't know all of it yet it's a new thing it's like when the internet came in there was uncertainty but now we know how to utilizes it's cool I do think we'll be fine but what I think is we're almost at that internet stage like I was too young when the internet came along to be able to do anything with the internet to maximize whatever I want to achieve in life I was too young back then I think I was about 10 or something when it became mainstream I am not too young anymore this is where being 40 right now is a superpower because I've got all the experience that I've got.

7:40I'm still young enough to learn this new kind of tools and everything. And actually, I think we're stood at the cusp of a really big boom that people could utilize. And there's a lot of talk at the moment about your personal brand is you and it's one person. But with the use of AI alongside that, you can scale so much easier so much bigger than you ever thought possible utilizing less of your time as well yeah so i think we're just stood at a really exciting point where people could see massive growth there's going to be people coming out of this next couple of years that are going to radically change their worlds for the better absolutely and i think that moves us nicely on to our three points looking forward to next year doesn't it of what we're going to be looking for when it comes to building your personal brand but something i will touch on that we're going to aim to do moving forward as well as as much as we will talk about ai we're going to talk as much as we can about how to not just feel overwhelmed you know as much as there'll be people saying you need to do this you're going to miss out you know or or like you say one tool that was relevant last week seems irrelevant this week because something else has um you know blossomed so it's it's trying to make sure that we all uh approach this with as much um grace and excitement about using them and only using what's like practical to us not yeah not feeling we have to do everything yeah and a few weeks ago i was on um an ai summit that um a few massive business people ran um and again it was trying to get people to look at ai in a different way and in how they can utilize it and one of the top things that they said on that to help with overwhelm was pick one tool yeah pick one tool that you can start diving into learn more about start using start learning how you can basically use it to benefit you get really good at that one thing instead of thinking again like 500 tools i need them all like and you can't be an expert in absolutely everything so but one tool one ai tool one good ai tool when you get to know that it's still going to revolutionize your world more than not having any help so yeah one tool with that one but we'll go more into that in 2026 won't we so on to 2026 what are we predicting are going to be the big game changes and things to focus on for personal branding so there's probably there's probably a lot coming in 2026 again with with ai it's going to change the game a lot but i think one of the things that I think is going to come in 2026 is definitely more kind of moving away from that content creator influencer type thing to becoming kind of almost micro authorities slash thought leaders in a space so it's less about you know it's more about the value that you can offer people and less about the noise that's out there online yes and algorithms are kind of going to push that aren't they the more value-led stuff yeah and the ideas yeah the more value you can give out the more it hooks people in and keeps them on a platform so the algorithm wants to keep you on that platform so it's going to love you more for doing that so yeah more value more value value value which is great because i think we've all got so much value to share and i think it's going to be so good and not only for everybody learning it but also everyone being able to share it as well how nice is that to give back to the world so toby what do you reckon what would be your second prediction for 2026 so i think we're looking at sort of following on from the brand new led keeping up personality led posts so that as much as an ai kind of cookie cutter style posts out there um i think the algorithms are going to start favoring those that are giving their personal opinion on things and shifting away from generic generic business stuff um and i think it's i think yes i think it's got to happen because we need to keep things engaging we need to keep things um as valuable as possible and you know our influences are going to be so automated to an extent that you know i think I read something the other day about like Walmart working with ChatGPT at the moment so that you'll be able to look for a Christmas gift and make the purchase within ChatGPT through Walmart so it will say here's something we think would be great for MT Vanessa and you can go yeah great all right buy purchase and two card details sorted so you know with that comes how do we make sure that all our content we're sharing is as important to the AI so that we're coming up in that as well more human really isn't it like personality human led and it was interesting again on the AI summit the other day they were saying about how to be happier with the use of AI and it was actually looking at the two sides of our brain right and left hand side are actually two different things and work in different ways so the was it the left side is more analytical so that's your AI side that's your pattern recognition that's your um admin tasks that can just get done by anybody use ai to do that kind of repetitive task take that off of your plate but what humans really love and what makes life worth living is the right hand side of the brain which is the creative side it's the love side the connection side the human side you use more of that and then you let ai use more of the other side of it and then together you've created more harmony and greatness that you love in your life and then you've utilized AI to take the repetitive tasks out that you don't even like anyway so that's really interesting I'm looking forward to that for next year more of that yeah more of the humor more of that connection more feeling more emotiveness yeah so then third prediction what we're going for third prediction is I think platforms are going to favor video more next year i mean it's already been kind of creeping that way anyway during 2025 hasn't it like different algorithms have switched even linkedin now kind of has been liking video a bit more i think we're just going to go down more of that route and again it feeds into everything doesn't it because and i know ai can do video i get that but you trust someone way more through video you get to know them you get to like them you get to trust them more but also it keeps you on a platform people don't want to read necessarily lots of stuff anymore they want to see you talking about that thing that they want to know and then move on so video is going to be really big which i guess we might need to do a special introvert video one over next year because actually how do you stand out on video when you do not want to be on video when you hate video is there anything out there there's a tool that i use at the moment that's a great one that's got like a video prompt thing on the screen so it looks like you're reading it so little things like that corrects your eyes um oh i don't know if it corrects my eyes there's one where you can have your script there and you can be reading it and then it will correct the eye contact so the eyes looking at the screen all the time whoa no i haven't seen that this puts the teleprompter on your screen so you're looking up at it anyway so it and it and it's not that the screen isn't that big so it doesn't look like you're reading a cloth it's literally like quick sentences so yeah but but tools out there like that yeah let's um uncover more of that next year for people but video yeah so those of you started and got brave with video this year well done you're going to be nailing video next year those of you who haven't dipped your toe into video yet let's take you there let's get you on camera speaking scary but it's good isn't it that's it so that concludes our podcast in 2025 we will be back in 2026 again with lots of juicy topics for you all about personal branding so you can grow your personal brands along with us and we just wanted to say a massive thank you to everybody who has followed listens likes comments on any of our social media posts that we share all the people that we've met in person that have said that they're really loving this podcast as well just thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts and also a big big thank you to spark house too who have sponsored this season of the podcast we are in spot we are in spark house now it is a great building for anybody in lincoln or lincolnshire that needs office space and they're really good at helping you helping scale your business with you as well So they've got smaller rooms if you want to start out with or co-working spaces right up to then fully fledged your own office spaces as well.

16:49So speak to them if you need any office space in Lincoln City Centre, like literally right in the heart of the centre, aren't we? And that's not even coming from the tenant of Spark House. So there you go. What a sale pitch that was. I just pitch up and use it for the podcast. Toby is actually here. So you get to hang out with Toby as well, like IRL in real life. That's not bonus enough. Happy New Year everybody from the Brand New Podcast and we look forward to seeing you in 2026. Here's to branding you in the new year.