Building a Personal Brand (Without Being Cringe) | Search With Candour x Indie Business Club

0:00Jack Chambers-Ward: Hello and welcome to this very special crossover between Search with Candor, which is me, Jack Chambers-Ward, the SEO and AI search podcast where I talk about the latest news and interview wonderful guests from around the SEO industry, and a lovely crossover with the Indie Business Club. Welcome Mel Barfield to tell us a little bit about that.

0:19Mel Barfield: Hello, yes. Indie Business Club is the podcast for independent creatives, freelancers, founders and business owners.

0:25Jack Chambers-Ward: And you and I have a lovely little origin story I remember we met in Brighton at Brighton SEO Three years ago now Yeah A while ago At least two years I think you were speaking

0:36Mel Barfield: Yeah October 2024 I think Two years ago I don't know now But you were the first listener in the wild that I met Yes It was amazing And I almost collapsed to the floor in delight Because I was like

0:48Jack Chambers-Ward: Because I remember seeing your face on the Brighton SEO website and thinking like why do i recognize oh yeah and i was good when i joined canada and started doing search for canada i was looking at other marketing podcasts and stuff and i know a few other sort of like fairly local people like you know smaller kind of shows and things like similar sort of size and i found in the business club and then i saw you in person i was like i have to talk to you in person and say hello i remember i literally got my phone i was like look my podcast no i made you

1:20Mel Barfield: prove it well i'd seen you do your live crossover another crossover show that you do um with the seo mindset yes ladies um and so i'd watch the show the night before watch the live show recording the night before i really enjoyed you and i kind of came up and did a bit of a and then you went i listened to your podcast oh my gosh i can't i can't tell you how much it meant to me i know that that seems really um deep and meaningful but it was it was a moment a milestone moment where uh i was just so shocked that you knew who i was so thanks you're welcome mate and it's

1:58Jack Chambers-Ward: lovely i know we've been planning to do this for a long while since then pretty much yeah yeah yeah we talked about it then and i was like oh we definitely should do a crossover and stuff and now you're actually here in a ridge in the candor studio so we can do it in person it's awesome and

2:10Mel Barfield: you've got an amazing setup here as well yeah yeah of all your road stuff it's very fun to actually

2:15Jack Chambers-Ward: do something in person as much as i like the you know remote stream yard kind of stuff it is always nice to there's nothing quite like the in-person rapport and chat of and the amazing hug i got on the way in as well exactly exactly good hugs drinks there's usually office dogs around like there's not many people in the office today but there was a very friendly dog though and we're going to be talking about some personal brand stuff i think that is an interesting topic because you and I come from very different parts of the marketing world. I've been agency side for nearly seven years now. I was briefly in-house before that, how I kind of started my marketing journey.

2:58Jack Chambers-Ward: But I know you've been freelance, copywriting and marketing for quite a while now.

3:03Mel Barfield: We say that. I actually went freelance in January 2022.

3:10Jack Chambers-Ward: That's a reasonable amount.

3:12Mel Barfield: but before that was employed yes my my entire entire adult life um almost um but have you ever been have you ever been purely freelance no no um i i've dipped my toes into freelancing stuff

3:27Jack Chambers-Ward: i know i've done a bit of sort of local seo stuff i help some friends out with the websites and stuff like that i've done voiceover work voice acting not really free i'm more just like doing auditions and hoping for the best never really made that much money out of it i've started to do video editing as well because cameras etc and i now know how to video edit it thanks to this job so i've helped a few people out with with video editing jobs and podcast audio editing and bits and pieces funnily enough you mentioned the seo mindset i did a recent completely random gig that sarah mcdowell referred to me there was a guy who called lyrebird studio so sarah's studio in worcester and he was asking about this thing before his wedding that was coming up in a couple of weeks it was like it's a couple of weeks ago now i was like wait what sarah just sent me this voice note trying to explain what was going on he had a guy completely mess up his like first dance mix there's like six songs that all transition and there's some silly bits in there it's like um i had the time of my life from dirty dancing and then the birdie song and all other bits and

4:34Mel Barfield: pieces the class all the classics all the classics exactly classic first dance stuff

4:37Jack Chambers-Ward: and a guy had claimed he could do that mix for him and had literally there was a video of him playing the videos on his phone on youtube with no audio editing no nothing it was just a video of someone else's phone playing the youtube thing and then between every clip his bare legs it was absolutely mad was someone doing a prank I assume so he apparently messed him around for about a year and then Sarah was like is this something you could do and I was like

5:09Mel Barfield: so is it clips from their wedding

5:11Jack Chambers-Ward: no it's the music for their first dance that was coming up there's two weeks to go they need a basically six and a half minute audio track

5:22Mel Barfield: yeah montage

5:23Jack Chambers-Ward: a mix first dance mix of it starts with this thing, then it goes into kung fu fighting, then it goes into this, then this bit of that Gangnam Style for 30 seconds here and then da da da da and this guy completely messed him around and Sarah was like do you think you could help this guy out?

5:38Mel Barfield: I'm not even funny, I feel like I could do that on edits or some kind of, or Canva

5:43Jack Chambers-Ward: Sorry, I didn't mean to say

5:44Mel Barfield: It was pretty simple Not a great job, but

5:46Jack Chambers-Ward: The thing is, I've never DJ'd in my life, but I'm very musical so I was like, okay, I need to Maybe not the mixing part actually, I'm just going to formally retract the DJ Barfield in the house I'm just gonna take that back immediately I couldn't mix it mix it but yeah sorry it was like beat matching and stuff yeah no I can do that okay and I was like for the comedic ones if I had a little record scratch in there and stuff like that like I could definitely do this how much do people I was googling how much do you charge for a first dance mix like I guess this is freelancing in a weird way it was like yeah It's like 150 quid.

6:20Mel Barfield: That is the freelancer rite of passage is Googling how much should I charge for this thing? Because especially something a little bit niche like that, that like you, you can't necessarily find someone's price list that will include that very specific thing. So you just have to have to guess and hope that you haven't massively underpriced what you, what your skills are, but also that you haven't priced yourself out of it. It's, it's horrible. it's a horrible thing pricing is the thing that people talk to me most about with with freelancing and how to pick that is that and how to find clients those are the two things that are the most uh asked questions really um and i don't have great answers for either of them to be honest except with pricing is like what's the lowest price like you could how low could you go before you actually resent having to do the work for that much and that gives you like the bottom bottom amount and then some people say you should go for the highest amount you can say without laughing or you know filling a face at yourself in the mirror uh somewhere in the middle of them where um were you happy with the price that you quoted did they say yes i didn't know yeah they

7:31Jack Chambers-Ward: did i ended up doing it yeah it was it was literally 150 quid but it was like an hour's work max so it's like not too bad that's pretty good pretty good alley right yeah i had to like work out how to get reasonable quality mp3s and then sort of like piece them together and i'm editing podcasts for 15 years so i know like how to clip and and shorten and you know match levels and all that kind of stuff and there was a real kind of okay if it's typical kind of to be very seo about it the ai overview from google and classic answer like if you're a professional you should be charging this and if you're starting off you should be charging this and like right so i've been editing podcasts for 15 years and i can do this and this is a pretty like you said the kind of reaction is like i could do that like yeah i know i again i couldn't do that but

8:23Mel Barfield: yeah but i think that's that's that's a lovely i think a lot of freelancers um get to do that and it's so it's really nice that you were in a position in your work where you've got an employed role where you've been able to learn and use all these different different skills and that you've got the freedom to go and do a bit of freelancing if you want to as well yeah it's a weird kind of

8:44Jack Chambers-Ward: combination um you move your mic down a little bit there we go perfect yeah that's that i saw

8:50Mel Barfield: the levels now just like i just moved sorry that's right i shifted myself no no it's all right it was

8:57Jack Chambers-Ward: kind of like pointing up i was like yeah perfect how the level how are my levels jack good you're My level's good. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And yeah, it's an interesting thing being employed, you know, full-time here at Canada, but that kind of transition, again, kind of getting into my personal brand, I guess, in a way. I've been doing podcasting since university, usually online with friends in America when I was doing sort of pop culture, journalism, writing, copywriting type stuff. I ended up doing comic book writing for a bit and other bits and pieces, more creative stuff. and then eventually editing those podcasts rather than just hanging out with my mates and chatting about stuff.

9:40Jack Chambers-Ward: And it was through that that Mark found me. So Mark, one of the directors here at Kanda, DMed me on LinkedIn and was just like, hey, I heard the latest episode of Sequelizers, which is the movie podcast they used to do about bad movie sequels. I actually really like Predator 2, so I do disagree with you. But it was a good show nonetheless. I also saw you're working in SEO. Would you be interested in this SEO job or PPC job? And I was working at another agency here in Norfolk at the time. And I was like, woefully underpaid, massively overworked because a bunch of people had just left.

10:17Mel Barfield: You're like, oh my gosh, headhunted. Yeah, yeah, I was kind of headhunted.

10:20Jack Chambers-Ward: And I'd already listened to Search with Kanda and found Kanda through Also Asked, which is the tool Mark and the developers had built here. because I had chatted to my colleague at the time at this other agency called Net Matters. And I was like, oh, I've been using this tool called Also Ask. And I saw the like built by Kanda in the corner there. And my colleague had worked with Kanda previously on the client side of things. She was like, you know, they're local, right? They're like down the road in Norwich. Oh my God. And weirdly enough, where we are now, I lived in a flat that's about 30 seconds around the corner at the time.

10:54Jack Chambers-Ward: So the Kanda office, unknowingly to me, the tool I had been using and the podcast I'd been listening to was 30 seconds around the corner.

11:01Mel Barfield: Oh, I love that.

11:02Jack Chambers-Ward: And it was this weird thing of getting the message from Mark out of nowhere. I mean, like, this is weird.

11:08Mel Barfield: Had you been looking for work at that point? No, I wasn't looking at the time. You just resigned to the fact that you were going to be underpaid. Yes, yeah.

11:15Jack Chambers-Ward: And it was an interesting thing where I had the conversation with the bosses there of like, hey, I've received this offer. It's quite a lot higher than what you're paying me right now. And they basically did a how much will we need to pay you to stay kind of conversation and almost doubled my salary overnight. So I went from I think I was on 24 then. And then they were talking about paying me over 40 by the time.

11:44Mel Barfield: Part of you thinks, why does it take me threatening to leave? That's exactly it, right? Like, yeah, you have that thing of like, oh, nice.

11:52Jack Chambers-Ward: They want to pay me. I was like, well, why wouldn't you pay me that?

11:54Mel Barfield: You had this money all this time.

11:56Jack Chambers-Ward: If you think I'm worth this and you have the money for it, then, like I said, I became the second most senior person in that team after a year of being there because everyone else had left. So I was like, I'm doing a lot of work here. It was far more clients than we have here at Canada. So typically smaller accounts. So I was doing like 15 different clients at any given time and the lead on 10 of those, but working on 15 different accounts. Whereas here, our account leads are like four clients, maybe five. that you can properly service for one of the better. Exactly, yeah. And a lot of it was just like crappy licking building, directory stuff and all that kind of thing.

12:33Mel Barfield: Did you find though that once you had the idea, once the thought was there of like, oh, candor, like, was that, that must have been hard to...

12:41Jack Chambers-Ward: Oh, definitely, yeah, yeah.

12:42Mel Barfield: Like, it was almost no going back at that point.

12:44Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, so I had a conversation, I had a video call with Mark and I saw, you can probably see there's some board games over there. Yeah, so I spotted Catan.

12:52Mel Barfield: Yeah. That's in my, you might have noticed that in the background of my videos if you ever see me online

12:58Jack Chambers-Ward: this is why we're friends Mel this is exactly it I saw Katan behind Mark when he was basically interviewing me and I thought yeah this is the vibe this is a bunch of nerdy board game playing cool marketing people because the job was okay but it was much more of a bro-y laddie kind of marketing kind of vibe and that's not my vibe at all I'm not into the of like yeah we have back on was like xboxes in the common room or whatever and it was just like everybody's just playing fifa all the

13:29Mel Barfield: time and i'm like if i've been playing halo then maybe see yeah we'd have been doing land parties

13:36Jack Chambers-Ward: and halo and stuff i'd have been there but but yeah it was it was kind of a conversation of like understanding the candor brand in that way of like i knew the vibe from hearing mark and rob and a few other people on the podcast and then realizing oh they also build tools they're not just an agency and then also seeing the board games in the background and kind of getting that

13:56Mel Barfield: vibe like yeah this is the kind of thing i haven't thought about like katan being strategically placed in my background i might move it up a few shelves because i recorded a podcast with my friend johnny rose who talks about about video and helps people to get on video and get over themselves and stuff and he mentioned he'd spotted and mentioned it or i mentioned it and he said he'd spotted it and i But it wasn't put there. It was literally like just somewhere to put it, away from the children's sticky fingers. There's strict rules about counting the pieces in and out of the box, like nobody bend the cards, that kind of thing.

14:33Mel Barfield: But yeah, I might put them a little bit higher up on the shelves just as an indicator that I am a nerd. Genuinely, yeah. To attract the fellow nerds.

14:41Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, I think that is a hugely underestimated thing in terms of that personal brand is talking about the things you like yeah whether it's like the reason mark knew about sequelizers is because i had decided oh i'll stick that on my linkedin i guess which previously i had not mentioned any podcasty stuff because i'm not going to be able to do that full time that's not work stuff that's me hanging out with my mates and whatever despite us having a patreon and making money from it and all that kind of stuff it's not work but there was a real kind of i mean maybe it'll be relevant like it's still relevant experience it's still content creation it's still community management it's all these kind of things that are transferable skills to something i guess and then yeah people suddenly discovering it through that and then seeing oh yeah this seo guy also does a movie podcast or finding search with candor a few people so the sequelizers discord is still a thing and i've had a few people ask me about marketing stuff like oh i want to work well i want to get into seo or get into copywriting or whatever and i'm like oh i'm going to find this resource go and do this thing and weird little crossovers between things and it can be as simple as yeah just openly being say jack there's a lot of nerds in seo yes

16:01Mel Barfield: there is a lot of us yeah yeah i think there's a lot of not an invite to be absolutely clear that is not an insult no no no i love nerds i am one

16:13Jack Chambers-Ward: um what what's your biggest nerdiest thing now what is like your you have to be an absolute nerd about one is it board games is it a tv show is it any particular thing i am i am

16:25Mel Barfield: quite well i know that you uh this isn't something that i am nerdy about at the moment but i do know that you uh i don't know if you currently play but you have played at least dnd oh i'm a big dnd guy um i used to love doing it but i don't have any i don't have anyone to play with anymore because it was like my ex-boyfriend from when i was 20 um and i used i like ridiculed it at first and then i do love i love that kind of thing any any board games that involve um completely screwing over someone else i love um you're quite competitive like that or is

17:00Jack Chambers-Ward: it just the chaos we're all competitive in my family as well so you know if you have the

17:05Mel Barfield: opportunity with katan to um cut through where someone else is going to build their road that

17:10Jack Chambers-Ward: sort of thing oh yeah very satisfying i find those kind of ball games where you don't really interact really frustrating because i either want to be able to screw someone over or work as a team team or something um i can't remember what game we were playing a little while ago it was me and four or five friends and we heard really great things about it but you're kind of just doing

17:32Mel Barfield: your own thing on your own little board and you're not really interacting with each other you could literally be doing that online yeah it was kind of felt like you're playing four

17:40Jack Chambers-Ward: separate solo things it was just like highest score wins kind of thing whereas exactly like you said well you can cut somebody off or steal a resource we had an alliance exactly strike a deal and all that kind of stuff like okay if you attack that guy then i agree to do this thing and uh cosmic encounter my favorite ballgame ever is just like that one is absolutely mad and you can strike alliances you can betray people each one plays you each of you plays a different alien race that has a crazy power i was about to get my phone and write it down and i remember that we're recording a podcast we are recording this don't worry i'll just listen back and remember exactly exactly but yeah it's it's some of the most fun i've ever had with like there are each power of there's like 50 different aliens and each one of them has a game-breaking power one of them is uh for example one of them is called the bride and you have to ally with them she just marries you tough shit you don't have a choice oh i love that so like okay when i'm attacking okay i'm gonna attack mel next and uh mark uh we're married now so you're joining me and you don't reveal your alien until you use their power so you don't know what anyone is and then you go I'm the bride, we're married let's kill Mel and everybody freaks out

18:55Mel Barfield: I love the sound of that and just on a wider note about personal branding and stuff I think a lot of grown-ups have forgotten how to play we don't play enough and that sounds like a really sad depressing thing and it is a bit sad and depressing but like when you say what do you nerd out about and the thing that came to mind was something i haven't done for 10 you know 20 years um you need to set aside more time to to play yeah because i think it makes you especially if you're in marketing or in some kind of creative field having the time away from work because my instinct when you say what what do you nerd out about my first instinct actually rather than d &d was tone of voice stuff i'm really nerdy about brand voice and spotting um because it's my work and i love it and i it's it's the core of what i do but actually i'm so no i can't say something worky um so yeah we do all need to have a bit of you know something to talk about when someone says what do you nerd out about um and yeah i think we're terrible at setting aside time to play because it's far too easy i'm not going on a massive rant about social media and stuff but it is far too easy to just spend the evenings just scrolling and and not having not feeling great about doing it yeah telling yourself that you're doing work related things perhaps sometimes or um telling yourself oh it's just that's just how i switch off but actually when you get together and play a ridiculous board game where you can force marry someone before a forced marriage board game um or just like these things that have these crazy rules where you're like how did someone come up with this this is amazing um yeah i think we should all play go and play a board game dear

20:37Jack Chambers-Ward: listener yeah after this episode i think that fuels creativity in that way we're like the one like piece of advice like i said i tried my hand at comic book writing back in the day done various bits and pieces my my partners are published like short story writer and poet and all this kind of stuff and there's that real thing of like if you want to create the thing go and read the thing or yes oh my gosh if you want to make board games you want to you know write something or make videos or whatever it is, go and read and view and do the things. If you want to write a novel, read novels. Not even necessarily in the same genre.

21:14Mel Barfield: And proper novels, not a chat GPT summary of what happens in the story, please.

21:19Jack Chambers-Ward: Don't get me started. But yes, yeah. So I think that is a big thing because I've always been a big, gross word, but consumer of media. Consumer of content. Content consumer, capital C, capital C, content consumer. and I like people are always amazed at how many podcasts I listen to you know a lot of people at one point I think I was hosting three different podcasts at once about various different topics and like oh wow yeah do you don't have any time I was like oh no I listen to like 50 different

21:52Mel Barfield: other podcasts as well because is it like alongside doing other things or yeah while I'm working

21:58Jack Chambers-Ward: while I'm working, while I'm driving, while I'm washing up, while I'm working out, whatever it is. It is podcasts, pretty much podcasts, audio books, music in the background, whatever it is. And it's those little things of, you know, how I ended up chatting to you. It's like, oh, yeah, I listen to IBC.

22:16Mel Barfield: I feel less special now because you listen to podcasts 24 hours a day. But I'm still glad that we made it into the foundation.

22:22Jack Chambers-Ward: I don't listen to many marketing podcasts. So there you go. You're still special. You clawed it back. Don't worry. but there is that like i love ball games i love video games comics less so now but i was really into comics when i was younger and i'm one of those nerds where like i just want everything about it yeah there's a behind the scenes podcast about a thing and i'm into that thing i'm all in and i'm subscribing i'm listening to all the things each week you're watching the dvd um

22:50Mel Barfield: the dvd extras yeah um narration over the top kind of stuff yes the movie commentary style

22:56Jack Chambers-Ward: stuff so much so that we did those on sequelizers like we would record our own movie commentaries of us discussing the bad sequels that we would fix that's beautiful yeah very meta there's some there's some infamous ones that that we talked about i highly recommend the thing you know john carpenter's the thing one of my absolute favorite films the i can't remember if it's kurt russell and John Carpenter, I think it is, and they just get drunker and drunker as it goes on. Oh, I've heard about that, yeah. They're drinking the J &B whiskey that there was like product placement in the film and they're just constantly getting drunker and drunker.

23:31Jack Chambers-Ward: And even things like, you know, people who inspired me to become a podcaster, like Kevin Smith, the director being somebody who is now a podcaster, more so than a director, but really his movie commentaries were his podcasts back then. It was him and Jamie and Ben Affleck. original podcasts like yeah yeah yeah that's a weird kind of thing of and then to turn it into a personal brand thing i'm like that is kevin smith's thing now he basically does podcasts for a living has he built a whole studio and a whole thing about being a podcaster rather than

24:03Mel Barfield: a film director everyone's a podcaster these days well yes exactly exactly but yeah i think that

24:09Jack Chambers-Ward: having that sharing your interests and whether it is literally like having something in shot or wearing a particular t-shirt and I often wear band t-shirts. I'm wearing a president t-shirt at the moment. The album came out a couple of weeks ago. And I've had multiple people message me from the banner we have for our newsletter for Core Updates. It's me, Mark and Mark's dog Snoop who passed away, R.I.P. Snoop. And I'm wearing an Opeth t-shirt, which is one of my favorite Swedish death metal bands. And I've had multiple people message me saying, oh I was interested in the newsletter but I hit subscribe when I saw you wearing an op-ed t-shirt nice and they send me like the heavy metal horns emoji and stuff and it's a tiny little thing like

24:53Mel Barfield: see Mark having a casual office attire I tried to work out the conversion rate of my heavy metal

24:59Jack Chambers-Ward: t-shirts I was like it's a thing I'm kind of known for yeah and I like even at Brighton SEO Brian Law from Ahrefs ran from his booth to come and say hello because I was wearing a band t-shirt exactly keep me in to get ryan on the show he's hopefully coming on the show soon but i know he's been very busy doing stuff but he i knew who he was but had never met him before and he ran over to say hello i was like love the t-shirt mate i saw them last year talking about uh one of my favorite bands mastodon was like saw him a download last year they were brilliant and we just got chatting and that's because i just wear bands i like on t-shirts and it's yeah it doesn't seem like a personal brand thing of like it's just expressing who you are and what you like But it makes you more relatable and that connection just happens without you even meaning to.

25:46Mel Barfield: And no matter what happens with the future of AI and robots and things, humans like humans and we want to talk to humans and relate to humans about what other humans like. And yeah, I've had it. I talk about cheese quite often because I like cheese. I love cheese. That's what I should have said when you said what you need. Yeah, you're a cheese nerd. Cheese nerd. Okay.

26:07Jack Chambers-Ward: Top three cheeses.

26:08Mel Barfield: Oh, it's like making me cheese's favourite child. Well, I share a favourite cheese with Sophie Cross, who is the Freelancer magazine. She's not editor anymore. She's the founder, the founder of Freelancer magazine. And we both love a rather obscure cheese that is layered with dulciolata and mascarpone. It's called Torto Dulciolata. It's very nice. I also love a bit of Stilton. This is like my cheap version of this is Philadelphia and a bit of Stilton. It gets a similar effect of the creamy together. together a blue but a creamy creamy plus blue um i also love a manchego i like a manchego as well i'm trying to make sure i've got a mix of all the cheese types too um and my brother my brother's a chef and he always gets and i can never remember what it's called he always gets this incredibly stinky cheese that we just call the stinky cheese yeah at christmas there's always one which is a really gooey it's like if brie um was left out on a very hot day it's got that kind of consistency it's great but in a good way uh so yeah those i've named more than three cheeses but i will make another honorable mention i don't know if i'm allowed to swear on this podcast uh shit log is the affectionate term for the you know the cheese that's smoked and it's put in like a plastic orange chub tube thing uh that's what my brother dog food dog food like yeah but Yeah, it's like Austrian smoked cheese.

27:38Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, Bavarian smoked cheese stuff, yeah. My fiance is German, so I don't know about German cheeses now.

27:43Mel Barfield: Ask her if they call it shitlog there. They don't because it was a term coined by my brother. Because it just looks like a big pig. But that was the only cheese that my husband requested on our wedding buffet. I bloody love a smoked cheese. It's a guilty pleasure for sure. It's one of my favourites for sure. It's pretty nice.

28:06Jack Chambers-Ward: but you like do you put it on a cracker just eat it just eat it so uh at college it was a go-to for me there were these it was a little tiny little local bakery and they have these little baguettes

28:20Mel Barfield: they would make every morning this is sounding very posh for student student food mate this is this is you're about to ruin it by saying a little town in the middle of nowhere in norfolk this is

28:29Jack Chambers-Ward: in north walsham in norfolk it's not not posh trust me but there's a little local bakery and the Sainsbury's next door to it and I would get this they would have this smoked cheese and a little like tiny little petit pan whatever the correct phrase is a little mini baguettes slice that open fill it with the cheese and then some sort of spicy sauce whether at the time it was a reggae reggae sauce or a chipotle mayo or something like that and that was my go to lunch at college which is probably why I'm overweight now

29:03Mel Barfield: Would you ever heat that up? I thought you were going to go to the panini toasty style.

29:10Jack Chambers-Ward: Mate, I should do. That's a very good idea. Now I am an adult with adult money. I should do that.

29:16Mel Barfield: It's dangerous being an adult with adult money, isn't it?

29:18Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, especially with nerdy interests and stuff.

29:20Mel Barfield: Yeah.

29:21Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, dangerous.

29:22Mel Barfield: Yeah, you can spend a lot of money on cheese if you're that way inclined as well. I also love a quesadilla. Do a quesadilla at least once a week for a quick lunch. sometimes with stilton sprinkled in you can overdo that though what's your favourite cheese?

29:38Jack Chambers-Ward: honestly

29:38Mel Barfield: you can pick three like I was allowed or you can go over three like I was allowed

29:42Jack Chambers-Ward: the Bavarian smoked cheese is definitely top tier for me I like a classic mature cheddar the sharpness of mature cheddar

29:50Mel Barfield: if you like it really, are we going vintage? dipping into vintage territory

29:54Jack Chambers-Ward: in the strength it's usually the 4 out of 5 strength so not like full on blow your socks off but like pretty strong and then I do like a yeah like a creamy camembert or a brie or something like that

30:09Mel Barfield: Do you like Castello Blue where it's like a cross between it's almost like a blue brie A blue brie? A blue wait for long enough brie It's lovely and actually their cheddar sorry this has gone off on an absolute cheese tangent the Castello brand mature cheddar is if you like a mature bordering on vintage try that one Jack that's a top tip other cheese brands are available

30:41Jack Chambers-Ward: we are not sponsored by Bavarian smoked cheese or Castello yet fingers crossed we can only hope

30:49Mel Barfield: it's interesting

30:50Jack Chambers-Ward: like my role marketing and partnerships being my job title and you said oh we're not sponsored yet the companies you choose to work with whether that's clients or sponsors and stuff like that i think does say something about you as a brand and even if you're one person doing a youtube channel or a podcast or whatever it is or you're part of a company you know there's we're still a small business here at canada there's 25 of us or you're part of a huge conglomerate who you work with who you choose to showcase and all that kind of stuff absolutely i think makes a huge difference and I've definitely seen audience backlash from certain creators or certain podcasters.

31:34Jack Chambers-Ward: This week we're sponsored by, insert name of controversial brands. Well, yeah, generally we're sponsored by Meta or there was the controversy around the online therapy BetterHelp. Do you remember BetterHelp?

31:46Mel Barfield: What was the... I've seen... Do they have YouTube ads? Oh, yeah. They're infamous for their podcast ads.

31:54Jack Chambers-Ward: So they had... had i can't remember apologies i'm sure i should look this up but it was that their therapists weren't always qualified therapists but you're paying for that kind of thing and yeah there was that's incredibly dangerous yeah there was a big discussion about like should you still in theory like the service has helped a lot of people and all that kind of stuff but they were currently in a legal battle while they were doing very clearly a huge content creator push so suddenly every big podcast was go to betterhelp.com slash name of this podcast and get 20 % off the usual podcast ad stuff and then all the comments or the like people posting about it would be like not sure this sell out yeah you've talked about mental health and how important it is to you on the podcast before now you're working with this brand i'm not listening to anymore and stuff like that well it can seem like small decisions but it can really put people off and if you see that

32:55Mel Barfield: something or someone is is giving you a huell discount code or something it it just i know i

33:03Jack Chambers-Ward: know we share we share a disdain for stephen bartlett that's uh yeah speaking of speaking of

33:09Mel Barfield: controversial controversial stuff that's damaging yeah yeah yeah it really it does and this is with freelancers in particular it can kind of make or break your reputation who you associate with and whether especially because on LinkedIn there are some real shysters who have used engagement. I know it's hard to believe Jack. I know it's like the place you go to have grown up conversations about business stuff without anyone trying to sell you things but yeah there's there's people who use engagement pods if you're not familiar with the concept it is paid engagement basically that is its sole purpose is to inflate artificially inflate the popularity of someone on LinkedIn and then those LinkedIn gurus who have used engagement pods will then sell their services as a LinkedIn trainer or whatever it's like but you've cheated you've cheated and so anyone the moment anyone tags one of those people and said oh I had I think this person's a really good person to follow I'm like instantly I have very little respect for you now because you haven't been able to see what to me is glaringly obvious so you've got to be careful who you associate yourself with and also as you say about sponsorship we had at the indie business club put out to the indie business club make it sound like there's a place uh at indie business club we got approached early on by some people wanting to sponsor but it was like an ai tool sorry no offense but no that's absolutely not in line with with you know our ethos and what we're

35:00Jack Chambers-Ward: about so yeah you're writing with ai stuff you're like yeah did you not check do i am like oh gosh

35:05Mel Barfield: I get that so much on LinkedIn. I'm like, can you read the room, please? Come on. Or at least my profile before you pitch me. I think that can be a thing. It can be really damaging.

35:14Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, definitely. It can be really damaging. And I think I find it interesting when you see, I guess because I'm in the agency world, I see this kind of thing, but I assume it happens for freelancers as well. When people announce a new client, like, oh, we're now working with Nike or Sony or whatever. Like often it's the huge household name type things, right? Or a startup or something. sexy and cool and interesting but i do find that interesting where you can really shoot yourself in the foot where either you announce a thing and people are like oh i don't like that oh you're working with this dodgy company or that's the kind of way you're going yeah i don't want to work with you and i think that also applies to things like testimonials case studies we've been doing a lot of case studies here and having the conversation internally of does this reflect well on us well yeah exactly and even sort of like what clients we work with the to the credit of the directors here at candor there's a real before we start working with a company they put it to the whole

36:17Mel Barfield: team on slack that's really good hey we're approached by this this is a literal example

36:21Jack Chambers-Ward: i can't remember the name of the company so anonymous by default thankfully it was like a gambling site of some kind it wasn't illegal stuff it wasn't anything like super super dodgy but gambling is gambling and we're like is this something the team would be comfortable working on you can let us know anonymously whatever you want to do blah blah blah blah we are we will not share our opinions as the directors but they have approached us with this thing how do you feel about it and i think it's much of a internal thing but that also reflects externally in terms of the brand candor is known as funnily enough a bunch of nerds because i'm shocked i know right crazy with the board games in the office and the there's an arcade machine in the corner over there and

37:08Mel Barfield: what i know yeah oh you didn't tell me about that before we because you knew because you knew i'll

37:13Jack Chambers-Ward: be over there yeah built by mark and it's called candor arcade branded all that kind of stuff there's a real kind of you know that kind of discussion happen internally because it matters what we work on and if you're not as you said like you're passionate about what you do whether that's like a tone of voice thing or brand or whatever it is then you're feeling more energized about your work you're more likely to enjoy you're less likely to have the churn of both staff and clients and all that kind of thing for me i think that is really important to try and align as much as you can obviously sometimes beggars can't be choosers obviously when you're getting started you're gonna have to do stuff to get money in your pocket and all that kind of thing but i do appreciate when you are able to make that choice and say yeah we don't gambling isn't really our thing or yeah there was a it wasn't an oil company but it was something close to an oil company like how do we feel about this you know from an environmental perspective and all that kind of thing have you encountered things like that before from people approaching

38:16Mel Barfield: you or like having that kind of discussion we did have a conversation with someone and it didn't end up with us working with them for um i think it's more budgetary reasons but they during the discovery kind of bit the little you know the informal chat where we're scoping things out they mentioned about being like vehemently and vocally anti-vax and that and that we then had a dave and i had a separate conversation about like do we want to like what around because we are in favor of people being vaccinated vaccinations have extended life expectancy etc etc and so we had we did have a little kind of side conversation and ultimately we didn't need to make a decision about it because um you know they couldn't afford us and so that that what you know was a problem that went away But it did make us think, would we want to, even though the product or service in that situation, the service wasn't going to involve using any of that messaging.

39:23Mel Barfield: It wasn't going to involve us having to write any words that were pro that stance. But it still felt a little bit like, I don't know how I feel about this. And so it did lead to a wider conversation about where those boundaries are. and for us like gambling probably would be a no no um but yeah i haven't like if i was approached by tobacco or vape or vape companies or anything like that it would be a no alcohol a little bit more blurred lines for me i don't drink at all um but i don't begrudge other people doing so but I also know you know had situations in my in my family where alcohol has ruined um ruined people's lives so I've got I've got quite mixed mixed feelings about it but I don't think I think that's a bit different in some ways though because I think you'd be you wouldn't be judged for having an alcohol client in the same way you'd be judged for having a client that was um about you know selling vapes gambling you know anything that's kind of further along that spectrum but yeah I think that's the beauty of being freelance or owning your own business or being in charge is being able to make those decisions yourself and I think it's great the way the directors here at Kanda have made it they've kind of removed themselves from it a little bit and given a voice to you as the staff I think that's really good so no one's silently seething or worse like if you had somebody who if we'd use uh let's use a different example if it was an um an oil uh related you know if it was bp or something and somebody had really it meant incredibly strong feelings about that and it meant that they couldn't do a good job on it because they were you know resenting having to do it and then they got just you know silently seething the whole time and really pissed off about it.

41:24Mel Barfield: That's going to have a much more negative impact than the positive impact of having that client revenue is going to make. It's going to be much longer long-lasting the impact than the income would be.

41:40Jack Chambers-Ward: It's really good that they

41:42Mel Barfield: approach things that way.

41:43Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, I think there's part of that in a weird way, you mentioned wearing band t-shirts and stuff, wearing your influence on your sleeve or wearing that brand your personal brand, your kind of vibe on your sleeve, metaphorically or literally in some cases, you instantly get that kind of relatability or connection with, oh yeah, I see that Canada work with these kind of companies. So we've had inquiries before where it is that kind of, I saw your work with this brand, we're from a different industry, but we liked what you did or on that kind of thing. And even again, understanding where competitors are.

42:23Jack Chambers-Ward: Oh, you work with these solicitors. We're also a legal company. Is that conflict of interest? How does that all work? And that kind of thing. But then I also see people that really niche down in their brand. Oh, we're an SEO agency that does just legal clients or financial stuff or whatever it is. We did, and I don't believe this company actually does what they say they do. it was an unbelievably niche industry it was the i'm sure i'm getting this wrong i think i've told this story before rubber sealants for like underwater long distance piping so like the pipes that hold the wife the like internet cables under the sea and it's the sealants and the things that make sure everything is watertight there's a company that makes those that approach us and we pitched for them and all that kind of stuff and we lost that pitch to an agency that in some way is like the underwater sealant agency and i was like bullshit to the underwater sealant agency you've done that thing where you create a little like sub-brand on the website yeah yeah it's the classic seo yeah with canada.co.uk slash underwater sealants like yeah we specialize in And it's like, no, you don't.

43:46Jack Chambers-Ward: Like, sure, maybe you've worked with a client or two in that industry before. But the fact that that client or potential client, I guess, was like, oh, yeah, they specialize in this industry. That's unbelievably niche. Like, I didn't know that existed until you said something. So I can understand if you're in a broader thing of if it is gambling or if it is financial stuff or legal stuff or whatever it is. sure that's that's an understanding you can specialize in that way but well you can niche

44:19Mel Barfield: down too far as well i have rudely reached my phone because that made me think of a book that i'm listening to because i don't have the attention span to read books and i was actually listening to it on the way to norwich today and i just wanted to double check the name it's called essentialism by Greg McKeown.

44:43Mel Barfield: It's M-C-K-E-O-W-N. And he talks about, the whole book is about focusing in on that one thing. And there were so many, you know, he said earlier about you have to feed your brain. You need to, if you want to write, you need to read. And he, so that's the way I get words in. And there are so many little nuggets I keep thinking, and this is the problem with listening rather than sitting and reading a book, is that I'll need to go back and find where this amazing little quote is that I need to write down and perhaps make a LinkedIn post out of. But he talks loads about the value and importance of niching in.

45:27Mel Barfield: He doesn't use the word niche. but doing that one thing that is going to make a difference in your business or in your life and just focusing in on that to the exclusion of other things. And he makes the very valid point that we have so much choice these days. It is ridiculous when you think of how many things you could be doing with your time right now. It's almost infinite and that wasn't always the case and the internet has made it so that we have infinite opportunities at all times. and that can be devastating to your productivity. If you're working on tons of different things or dipping in and out, and I'm not saying you should give up all of your lovely hobbies and stop being so creative, but from a career point of view, there's this quote that I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's to do with moving a millimeter in a million directions rather than if you focused on one direction, how far could you go?

46:28and that I think is partly why I do loads of different things

46:36Mel Barfield: because I like to do loads of different things. I like to move a millimetre in a million directions

46:40Jack Chambers-Ward: but I always feel like what if I just did one thing and I get bored. I don't know Jack.

46:45Mel Barfield: I don't know whether it's maybe there's a happy medium to be found where instead of essentialism where you're just focusing on one thing maybe you have like two things, three things maybe.

46:57Jack Chambers-Ward: that's kind of what i was thinking yeah rather than hyper fixation and the super niching down and all that kind of thing you end up with a specialism of three things or something like that otherwise you've got all your eggs in one basket that too as well yeah and then technology can come along and yeah we've seen industries come and go from shifts and again we had a client a little while ago that was massively affected by the u.s tariffs because they had again can't remember how specifically it worked but there was a steel was part of their process and they were so they had to wholesale that to manufacture the things that they made and the price of steel quadrupled overnight so they were suddenly like that doesn't work for us fundamentally we cannot make money from this now because that is now more expensive than it is to sell it so they were like we don't know what we're going to do but we need to pause our retainer with you guys like right now because ah, shit, what do we do?

47:55Jack Chambers-Ward: And like you said, if you niche down into one thing, sure, you might have transferable skills, you can pivot and things like that. But I do, especially with everything we've seen in SEO recently.

48:08Mel Barfield: Now, more than ever.

48:09Jack Chambers-Ward: Exactly, exactly. The landscape of SEO has changed and all that kind of thing.

48:13Mel Barfield: Ever-changing digital landscape.

48:15Jack Chambers-Ward: Exactly. You're stuck in that. if you're stuck in one little trench that can get wiped out pretty quickly but i think it's easier

48:25Mel Barfield: if you are stuck in that one trench and that's the thing you do but you also talk about your hobbies outside of that book yeah that makes it a whole lot easier to shift what you do and i think that's what to me personal brand that's its that's its big value is you get known as a human being who happens to do this one thing. And then if that one thing changes, you're still the same person that likes cheese, playing Catan, D &D. It's funny that you mentioned the sequel to Alien earlier. I was on a podcast as a guest, which is always a nice change, and we bonded. We'd bonded already, if there's someone I knew.

49:10Mel Barfield: And we bonded over our shared love of Superman 3.

49:14Jack Chambers-Ward: Ooh, interesting.

49:16Mel Barfield: okay obviously you don't share i mean four of quest for peace is terrible but like it's come on that's a that's a given yeah um no that but for both of us superman 3 is our favorite superman film because favorite superman yes and let's not get into that but we we bonded over that and i'm so i'm not in that person's eyes it's his name's philip he's lovely um philip oakley his podcast is it's lovely as well the po show um he and i bonded over loads of different things including a love for the kooks and various other stuff so i am not just a copywriter to him i'm a whole human being with interests and passions and and hobbies and stuff and so if i shift my offer i'm still the same person to him whereas if you don't have a personal brand and all you are known as is the person that does this one thing, copywriting for sealant companies, do the sealant in offshore pipes, then your whole professional brand and reputation is gone because you no longer do that thing.

50:32Mel Barfield: So I think that, to me, that's the massive value of personal brand is not just is it helping people to get opportunities now, there's an element of future proofing I think

50:47Jack Chambers-Ward: I hate to quote somebody like Jeff Bezos but I'm going to do it to paraphrase I think it is roughly the quote is brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room so exactly as you were saying there if then Philip is talking about you in a different context oh yeah is it Mel the copyright is it Mel the D &D fan and I zip-mail the huge fan of the kooks or whatever, like that kind of thing. A lot of people, again, I noticed this happening in various different friendship groups of like, oh, Jack's the podcast guy to a lot of people. But then if I'm hanging out with podcasters, I'm the movie guy because my podcast was about movies.

51:28Jack Chambers-Ward: But then one of my co-hosts, Matt, is a literal film director, film critic, all this kind of stuff. People think I'm him. And he basically goes to the cinema two or three times a week, every single week for the last 20 years almost without fail bar covid like yeah you see when i know this person is he famous uh well famous from sequel ads of course of course of course i'll know who um but yeah he's he's directed like his own short films and things like that as well and it's weird having that context of oh people think i'm a movie guy and i'm like i'm really not a movie guy but I guess to you I am a movie guy to me you're a movie guy see exactly and to people

52:13Mel Barfield: who don't do podcasts I'm the podcast guy yeah if I talk to other podcasters I'm just like every other podcaster that's such a good point about the context yeah yeah seeing yourself in different contexts and because I think again not crediting Jeff Bezos in any way shape or form god you love

52:28Jack Chambers-Ward: him a big fan I'm gonna get a bald cap and everything plan to get a plan to get a space

52:33Mel Barfield: you're only allowed to get a bald cap if you're going to a pitbull concert I mean yeah yeah that Speaking of branding.

52:40Jack Chambers-Ward: I mean, perfect example, right? I remember it went around in the SEO community a little while ago. Pitbull joked about, if you Google Pitbull, it's me, not the doc. I was like, that's a brand. That's going on a slide in Brighton SEO. Yeah, right? That is powerful right there. And the fact that, you know, I don't know how much of his conscious thought was to be a bald Hispanic guy wearing those suits and all that kind of stuff. Is that just his vibe? And he was just kind of like that. Or was that...

53:11Mel Barfield: He leaned into it.

53:11Jack Chambers-Ward: Was that a calculator thing? Yeah. You exaggerate those things. If you're going to be a performer, you're going to be a content creator, whatever it is, lean into those things. Don't exaggerate. Don't play a character necessarily.

53:23Mel Barfield: Well, I need to counterbalance the Bezos with the beautiful Dolly Parton, and she rests in peace. Her very famous quote, find out who you are and do it on purpose. And a lot of branding agencies and personal brand experts use that as the that is the kind of the north star bit of guidance really is is find out who you are and do it on purpose and don't i found that people connect with the random stuff so my like i want to ask you a question in a second actually um i've posted about some really random things on linkedin and then one situation led to somebody literally writing a song about this situation I had in on holiday where there was an argument over pancakes um another another one um is how I got my podcast producer aunt because I posted a story that my daughter had written and not got through to the next round on a competition and he turned it into this lovely like audio book he soundscaped it and it was it was very atmospheric and cool and I think what people forget is that actually sometimes it's the off the cuff this is just a funny thing that happened to me that it's those posts that build connection with other people yes you need to be online selling your wares and promoting what you do and showing that you're good at what you do but there's so much kind of foundational rapport building that you can do from a distance by putting yourself out there and posting about things that you find interesting or funny because if you find something interesting or funny the chances are someone else will as well you can kind of have that little bonding moment about certain things yeah i was having that conversation

55:04Jack Chambers-Ward: with my fiance who posts a lot of stuff on linkedin as well and it was that i've become of a specific it was complaining about people being loud on trains she did a post about that oh my gosh it was like it's a best performing post of the year by far i can imagine and the classic thing of like you know you spend all this time shooting and editing and voiceover and blah blah, blah, blah, and taking these lovely photos or writing something great. I was like, I took a photo of my laptop and then on a train and some dickhead is having a very loud phone call or whatever it is. And that blows up. And like you said, I think it's relatable.

55:40Jack Chambers-Ward: People underestimate that kind of stuff. There is to think about the classic marketing funnel, but in a slightly different way that discovery process but also what i do a lot in my job is that nurturing of relationship stuff as well whether we have a long time sponsor or a partner or whatever it is or a company we work with it's also doing those things where okay maybe people will discover you because you're talking about board games or cheese or whatever it is but then you're also mel the copyrighter You're also, Mel, the family person. You talk about, oh, isn't it annoying when kids do this or when your partner does this or the dog does this or whatever.

56:24Jack Chambers-Ward: Those little things also then build up, like you said, that rapport. It's a picture of you in their minds as a whole human. Exactly, yeah. I'm not saying you have to share personal details of your private life or anything like that, but real moments in your life, little moments, little bits and pieces that feel real. again coming back to ai and being authentic and all that kind of thing the first ever talk i did was about being authentic and how much that matters to me as a person who watches reads consumes content consumes content and the fact that i noticed a theme without even kind of realizing it of a lot of the podcasters i listen to i just kind of be in themselves and talking

57:07Mel Barfield: about the things they like so much easier to just be yourself and you don't have to worry about a mask slipping that's the other thing um yeah you mentioned that like the family side of things i very rarely talk about my children online and when i do it's either so one of the one of the posts that i've had that was big was just born out of frustration because i'd see people going oh here's my more my early morning routine as a successful founder blah blah and mine was like 6.30 try and get my kid out of bed, 6.35 try and get my kid out of bed. It was like the minutiae of my morning that is repeatedly nagging my kids to get their shoes on.

57:52Mel Barfield: So it was a bit of a parody post that I just sat on the floor like ranted out on my phone one time. That did really well. But the other thing that I share is my daughter, my eldest daughter has hearing loss and wears a hearing aid. and so I'll sometimes talk about that in terms of the industry so representation because she loves loves seeing anyone in the media when she's consuming content my 12 year old likes to she loves seeing people with hearing aids and cochlear implants and stuff on tv she loves it because she's like that's like me and so I talk about it in that in that context of representation in marketing and advertising um i don't share any pictures of my children online um i have shared pictures of my children online as a family photo and put my face on theirs before just yeah it does

58:45Jack Chambers-Ward: look creepy but i think it looks hilariously creepy yes but some people have been like oh

58:49Mel Barfield: what a lovely family and i think they didn't they don't realize that they've just they've just

58:53Jack Chambers-Ward: scrolled quickly and mel's genes are really strong really like he didn't have a chance

59:00Mel Barfield: so there is like you say there's a there are ways you don't have to just you know give away all of your you know personal life but you can make mention of little things here and there that build up this picture of you know what my life must be like so people then relate to that i think it's so important and just going back to the the train situation um another one of my big hit posts, oh my god, the hit tweet, was talking about, you know, see it, say it, sorted. A lot of people do not like the fact it doesn't match. The sorted thing, yeah. There is a very good reason it isn't see it, say it, sorted.

59:43Jack Chambers-Ward: I remember seeing your post about this. Thank you. I specifically remember this.

59:46Mel Barfield: and so in a nutshell see it you see something say it you tell someone sort it if it did like run on from the previous two that would imply you are meant to sort it they absolutely you're the bomb disposal guy they categorically do not want you to try and sort it so sorted there's a couple of things it's a pattern interrupt because you're expecting it to be sorted so when it sort it so when it's sorted it kind of makes people go oh and it makes people remember it because they all go why isn't it and actually it's embarrassing i overheard some people going why isn't it sort it like this sounds like an absolute lie of a story but i promise you this

1:00:31Jack Chambers-Ward: is true that's what it taught me about b2b marketing it was genuinely i overheard them

1:00:36Mel Barfield: I promise you it's true in King's Cross. And I said to them, I explained why. And then afterwards I was like, oh, no.

1:00:46Jack Chambers-Ward: You didn't just get your phone out and be like, here's my hit tweet.

1:00:49Mel Barfield: Follow me on LinkedIn for more. No, I was embarrassed, but I also was quite pleased with myself that I'd done it because now they will remember that forever because they were interrupted by a random stranger who overheard them saying, why isn't it sorted? But yeah, so it's a dual reason. and it's the pass and interrupt that helps people remember it, but it's also because you absolutely should not be trying to sort it. And as I say, a post about that, it demonstrated that I think and understand language as well. So it wasn't entirely unrelated to work, but it was also a bit of a, oh, that's something people get really pissed off about, so I'm going to post about it and hopefully calm them down because they'll realise there's a very good reason.

1:01:32Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, I specifically remember your post about that because did i change your mind no i already agreed with you thankfully thank you but you not only said about it from a the place the agency the requirement of who is doing the sorting but you also mentioned the pattern interrupt there and i had not had anyone else talk about why it works as a marketing thing and why it sticks and obviously that era of the government and in general was obsessed with three words hands face space all that kind of stuff the band the boats all that kind of stuff is like three word catchphrases that are obsessed with

1:02:10Mel Barfield: the power of three it's a thing it's the power of three is a thing and and pattern interrupt is

1:02:14Jack Chambers-Ward: absolutely a thing as well you get into the rhythm of a particular thing and then suddenly there's a change whether you are consciously aware of it and complaining about it or it just catches your attention a little bit more that is really powerful marketing when it comes to not just being background noise and not just being another train ad or whatever it is if you can disrupt slightly and like i guess like And expect the unexpected, change the viewers' expectations in those certain ways. I think that is a really powerful thing. And I specifically remember your post about it.

1:02:53Mel Barfield: That was like two years ago, so I'm impressed that you remember that.

1:02:55Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, yeah.

1:02:57Mel Barfield: But when you're saying pattern interrupt as well, that's another reason to put yourself out there on LinkedIn and talk about what you're interested in. because the formulaic bilge that is on LinkedIn is painful and people use the same sentence structure and formatting and stuff. It's just so generic that if you can tell a funny little story or have a hook that interrupts that pattern, and genuinely so, not just as a formulaic hook.

1:03:32Jack Chambers-Ward: How are you challenging me to write me a thing that interrupts the pattern?

1:03:35Mel Barfield: if you can actually talk like a human on there uh then that that does that that job of interrupting the pattern and it does get people's attention and i think that's something that i've benefited from on linkedin is is going i call it going brain to fingers so that it's not overly uh clinically what's the word sanitized um to within an inch of its life and then it sounds like everyone else so I overthink things at work when I'm writing for work I absolutely look at stuff from every possible angle but when I'm posting on LinkedIn I will just and then hit send because then people

1:04:14Jack Chambers-Ward: are seeing the real me yeah I think and LinkedIn is a tricky one I think because a lot of people see it as just the professional stuff or you have to always talk about Facebook exactly exactly and again having conversations with my partner about this with people complaining for oh don't share about this personal thing or whatever it's like well then don't follow that person yeah you can you can choose to follow whatever you like and for me i'm trying to sort of think about that i'll give a shout out to somebody who used to be on the show and a while ago a guy called uh chris ridley who was uh is a ppc guy i saw him speak at brighton he's been on the podcast and we again shared a love of board games we ended up at the end of the podcast i always do the what have you been enjoying recently non-work stuff what film have you watched what games you've been playing music whatever it is and chris was like oh these board games mate you need to get into this this and over the last 18 months or so chris has started writing for a board game website and traveling to conventions and stuff and then because he started sort of freelancing and and helping out with some of the website stuff, they sent him to the European Games Expo or UK Games Expo.

1:05:29Jack Chambers-Ward: So he can then go and man a table for them and start that kind of thing. And now half of Chris's LinkedIn feed is like, here's this thing you need to know about Google Ads and why your PBC stuff is working. Here's genuine advice about paid social stuff, whatever it is. And then it's also, here's me and my wife. We're going off to the UK Games Expo. I'm covering this topic. I'm hosting this thing, all that kind of stuff. and that's so cool and that was just out of like you said sharing your interests talking about the things you don't have to just oh you're the seo guy you're the copywriting person you're the pbc person you can also talk about other stuff and sometimes that's the thing that opens the

1:06:07Mel Barfield: opportunity for you that is my one of many regrets i have about twitter being no longer what it was is i put a tweet out saying uh we i think it said something along the lines of like we we've been playing xyz um what can anyone give me family-friendly recommendations of games that have a bit of stress board games have a bit of strategy or something and i had so many replies so so many replies because people who love board games love talking about board games and i it was like right towards the death the final death uh throes of what twitter was and i was about to leave and i was like oh how do i preserve this uh so i think i've got somewhere i've got like a spreadsheet with them all written down but people are so generous with their time you know saying oh i love this game you should you should get this game you know and yeah i i need to talk about board games on linkedin i think because i i need i need some some real people's recommendations but out of um asking that i bought have you played dixit yes yeah got dixit uh that's difficult sometimes though because there's only three of us in my family who are old enough to play it well and it's it's not the same without more people um and then also um azule yeah and got a top tip to get the kind of chocolate box version because it's interesting it's got a different one on the back

1:07:32Jack Chambers-Ward: of the board there was the there's a follow-up to azule that is the because there's it's like the tile version is the original version then there's a stained glass version and play that is really and they're like see-through things and you're a stained glass there's a correct word for the stained glass worker whatever that correct word is that's the name of your little person you're moving around and you're trying to collect certain colors to line up these things and then building each window as you go and there's a very satisfying like box that you drop all of your plastic tiles in and that's you smashing the tiles and losing points and they all clatter in together and it's

1:08:09Mel Barfield: very tactile and very nice see board board game people love talking about board games yeah exactly

1:08:13Jack Chambers-Ward: see as soon as we say this like oh yeah there's this thing like yeah yeah yeah exactly and that's

1:08:19Mel Barfield: yeah that's for me personal brand isn't about oh i just i have this hatred for i won't say who but somebody who is a personal brand guru and she once said that to be taken seriously as a professional or women should always wear heels. Good Lord. This is not... Come on. But no, building a personal brand is not about wearing high heels. You can if you want to. If you want to wear high heels, be my guest.

1:08:45Jack Chambers-Ward: Absolutely.

1:08:45Mel Barfield: But can we understand a bit more about genuine interests instead? That's ridiculous. I know, I can't stand her. She's quite well known and has lots of... I'll tell you after. She has lots of speaker opportunities and stuff. but she um yeah i just i was but this is the thing we were saying earlier about how you can instantly be put off someone like there is next to nothing she could say or do that would make me like her now because i'm like that's no because that's such a fundamental um misalignment of values that i have with her because as we say if you love wearing high heels go for it but her argument was that everyone every woman should to be taken seriously and that is that's mad no bueno yeah yeah but i think personal brand though is as much as about putting off the wrong

1:09:38Jack Chambers-Ward: people as it is attracting the right ones yeah i think the thing that i think from being a content creator for so long for podcasting videos marketing in general the classic if you're trying to please everyone you please no one yeah and i was listening to a podcast about video games this morning on my drive to work and i'm having this exact conversation of this game is trying to be accessible and also deep in this way and intricate in this way and in that way it never really goes intricate enough with this to satisfy the fans of this kind of genre but also it's not accessible enough for absolute beginners but it doesn't really work for them either you're trying to please too many masters at the same time so you end up not actually solving the problem and what we said earlier about niching down i think that is something when it comes to i've seen this quite a lot of conferences and stuff the what kind of audience are you talking to the question and i'm sure you have this as an experience as a speaker yourself i like that oh it's uh you know it works for like people who are in the industry experts and that kind of thing and then the organizers almost always say like does it also work for beginners i'm like well

1:10:55Mel Barfield: you can't well no can't do everything yeah and the amount of times i've seen this talk is suitable for

1:11:04Jack Chambers-Ward: beginners to professionals like is it though or is it like five minutes of one and then five minutes of another the introduction will make sense to somebody who has doesn't know anything about seo and then the first 10 minutes will be boring to someone who works in seo and then maybe they'll learn something in the last five minutes or ten minutes or that extra little section but if you've already bought them in the first 10 minutes or lost people in the first 10 minutes the other way around you need to kind of know your audience and understand what you're writing to we have a client here who is again trying to explain what they do they do a lot of like paving and decking and things for big commercial and big residential properties.

1:11:49Jack Chambers-Ward: So huge tower blocks to nationwide supermarket chains and all that kind of stuff. And understanding, I remember first working, I onboarded them the week I started here at Canada. My first client here was still with us five years later.

1:12:05Mel Barfield: You obviously did a good job of onboarding them.

1:12:07Jack Chambers-Ward: Exactly, I like to think so. And there was that conversation of, I don't know anything about paving and decking. I have neither paved nor decked. how does this all work? And learning about them was one process, but the people, the architects, the project managers, the construction project managers are going to know more about this than me. So that's why the team at this client need to know their products and know their services well and write content that is relevant and structure their website in a way that is relevant to that audience. You can, you often strike in that balance between the B2B and B2C audience.

1:12:43Jack Chambers-Ward: Well, if you're trying to appeal to a construction project manager or an architect, they're going to know a lot more about this stuff and want to book a multi-million pound project or whatever, compared to Jack wants to do some decking in his garden. I'm not your client. I'm not your audience. I'm not your target customer. And understanding how to write for them, how to structure things, even things like categorization on your website. how do people describe this stuff if they're in the industry versus not in the industry do they use other words for paving slabs or paving blocks or whatever and it was a real learning curve for me to be like oh yeah we really need to focus on that audience specifically and how they discuss things in those industries do you have a similar kind of thing when it comes

1:13:32Mel Barfield: to that kind of copywriting discussion and this is that kind of tone of voice and stuff as well Going back to the example that we used earlier of the underwater piping sealant specialists, I do think there's a lot to be said for bringing in experts who are experts in what they do, but not necessarily experts in your industry. because and we're going off on a little bit of a tangent but um it's related i promise because if you're it's that whole thing of like if you're you can't read the label from inside the bottle that that kind of thing and actually i think if you're offering a service to people you being able to go i don't know much about that niche industry that you do can you explain it to me like you'd explain it to you know someone on the school run or you know someone that didn't know about and then i think you can because i think sometimes there can be a danger of and this is where it links to personal brand stuff of if you if you know an industry really well then actually writing for them or um doing a service for them it can feel it can become quite samey and cooker cuttery and actually if you go into things with that like oh actually i don't know can you tell me about this because i don't know um i think that's a strength massively i think the broader terms with your personal brand.

1:14:51Mel Barfield: I think there is a lot to be said for admitting that you don't know certain things and being that the enthusiastic beginner in certain areas, not necessarily the area that you work in. If I was going online going, I just really want to learn more about copywriting frameworks, then my clients might be like, hang on a minute, you're supposed to know about these. That's like what you're supposed to know about. But you know if you're interested in um other industries or or certain board games or i think it's showing that you're curious about stuff is really appealing to people and it's important in work but it's i think it's also important in building your personal brand to not not try and look like a know-it-all expert but to be open about where the gaps in knowledge are or what you're interested in because i think interest is really interest is interesting and i sound like I'm just word souping now.

1:15:45Mel Barfield: But one of the things that I advise people to do when they go to networking is to be interested and ask lots of questions of other people. Because people sometimes go in thinking, oh, I need to be interesting. But actually, you really need to be interested to build that rapport with people and ask questions and stuff.

1:16:03Jack Chambers-Ward: People love to talk about themselves. He loves to talk about board games. And be nerds. Exactly. Yeah. there's a thing I've I've heard before

1:16:15I'm going for an hour

1:16:17Jack Chambers-Ward: and 15 minutes by the way when do you want to wrap up like quarter past five

1:16:23Mel Barfield: do we need to get any yeah I'm going to ask you what the weirdest thing is

1:16:31Jack Chambers-Ward: that you post down I

1:16:34Mel Barfield: do you want to have any roundup type key advice for building a personal brand? What I haven't asked you about is your maybe if have you got something to say now as well? Yeah, I will. After that, perhaps if I ask you about how you've been able to carry on building a personal brand alongside work and then we could do it like a

1:17:05Jack Chambers-Ward: top tip type thing. I think the important thing of that, like you said, being interested in other things, I found that a lot interviewing people on the podcast as well. Being nosy, basically. Yeah, and not knowing a subject as well as that person and being comfortable with that. And the opposite of that, I think so many people, and this is especially true when it comes to website content, social content, copywriting in many different forms, is the especially if you're leaning and using LLMs and stuff is the explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old and then I've had this conversation with a client before I was like oh so your customer's five-year-olds no they're fucking not you're not selling to five-year-olds so why are you writing for five-year-olds I get that if you're in the research process but when if you're actually creating content for adults you need to understand what those adults want what they know and i think again i mentioned that the marketing funnel kind of oversimplification of the the buyer journey the discovery journey all that kind of thing but i think knowledge and interest like you were saying earlier is a huge factor in that if i'm a big nerd about something i want to learn from other nerds about stuff like you were talking about dixie and i was like oh i've heard of that board game yeah that's cool and I'll learn about that kind of thing.

1:18:26Jack Chambers-Ward: I mentioned Cosmic Encounter. I could see straight away, you were like, oh, I want to write that down. I had something I haven't heard of, a recommendation from somebody who is also...

1:18:35Mel Barfield: Thank you for reminding me what it's called, by the way. That's fresh to my mind.

1:18:39Jack Chambers-Ward: See, that's branding right there. But even, yeah, learning from other nerds. If I want to go deep into a subject, which I typically do, then I want to learn from the people that are more knowledgeable than me. I don't want somebody to explain to me like I'm a five-year-old. I'm a 36 year old I don't need to like have it oversimplified in certain ways some cases sure you do if it is a super technical thing and it's like what is this legal thing or whatever you're not a lawyer I don't expect you to be you know representing yourself and all this kind of thing but I think so often people lean too far towards that oversimplification rather than considering oh yeah my audience is actually quite knowledgeable and is a professional in this industry so they will know about this stuff already and you fall into the case of doing the SEO content for SEO sake of what is topic?

1:19:30Jack Chambers-Ward: How does subtopic work? I'm just going to answer all of my FAQs about the most basic top level stuff instead of actually getting into the details of some examples of incredibly specific questions. And I know there was a client we were working with a little while ago who had those very top level FAQs on their page. Is there an e-commerce client and i said i am the target audience for you i have bought your products before i don't care about any of this stuff yeah tell me about this thing and it was literally licensed nerdy merchandise stuff it was dnd it was stranger things marvel dc star wars all that kind of stuff i was like i literally own a hoodie a jacket a t-shirt from you guys if i want to find this stuff i want to find it through this way there was no way to sort of like filter by brand for example and i used another example um i'll shout out this company uh truffle shuffle they had they're a nerdy merchandise company and you can sort by not only brand so star wars etc but like broader interest gaming tv shows movies sci-fi named after the signature

1:20:48Mel Barfield: move in the Goonies.

1:20:51Jack Chambers-Ward: Exactly, in the Goonies, yeah. And there's that kind of, are you into... I love that name.

1:20:56Mel Barfield: It's just that instant recognition. It's going to attract the right people.

1:20:58Jack Chambers-Ward: Exactly, exactly. There's that thing, if you get it, you get it. If you know, you know, kind of thing. And even, I mentioned my t-shirts earlier being a part of my accidental personal brand. Loads of people I know buy t-shirts on purpose that are only, if you know, you know. Oh, it's the logo from the company from the aliens yeah yeah you're wearing the weyland yutani logo so it's not like oh it's a big alien and going at the camera it's just like a subtle and you're like yeah and i literally had this experience in an airport um a couple of days ago a guy i was chatting to a guy so international trying to be uh went to prague for my birthday and on the way back the gate change there was massive delays and stuff i saw a guy go to the wrong gate and i was like oh mate we've been moved over here and he put his laptop on away and he had a usc nostromo sticker on his laptop i was like that's the shit from alien i was like oh cool nostromo sticker there mate big aliens fan he's like oh hey man and we ended up sitting there and chatting about films and our time in prague and all that kind of stuff and it was just that little thing of i saw a sticker on your laptop that i recognized the logo of but to anyone who has not seen that film doesn't mean

1:22:11Mel Barfield: anything wouldn't admit yeah wouldn't meant anything exactly yeah as well as playing more

1:22:15Jack Chambers-Ward: we need more random encounters with strangers that's what we need in a nice way in an in a very

1:22:19Mel Barfield: nice way um but it's interesting what you're saying about the oversimplifications when we do tone of voice work with people uh with brands we there's this idea that you should be simplifying everything but actually if you're talking to your target customer who shares the same jargon jargon's great jargon's a shortcut the word jargon kind of has a bit of a bit of a bad name um so yeah just want to pick up on that about the language element of it um but you've been really successful in you've obviously got the job that you've got at the moment through your personal brand how because i know a lot of people are a bit reluctant if they're employed they're kind of reluctant to post on linkedin because they feel like it's gonna make the boss think that they're going to oh why hang on a minute why are you suddenly updating your online cv which is what you know what linkedin is thought of as um how obviously you've got a super cool boss here bosses that helps that helps but how do you balance building your personal brand with

1:23:22Jack Chambers-Ward: representing candor as well that is a conversation i've had with the directors here thinking about what I'm sharing does represent candor in certain ways and I have definitely not gone absolutely mad but just like talked about other stuff that does not necessarily represent candor and there is that whole the classic thing people have in their bios of what's it?

1:23:49Mel Barfield: It does not represent views.

1:23:50Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah, views of my own kind of stuff.

1:23:52Mel Barfield: I had to put that in my Facebook when I had a job and it really riled me because they told me I had to put it in there and I was like excuse me yeah why who are you to tell me that um that that was yeah I did though that was because I was known for working at that place so it was fair this is pre-copywriting

1:24:13Jack Chambers-Ward: this way way back yeah way back but yeah I think you're totally right I think a lot of people see it as and I've heard people lose their jobs for talking about do you have that do you have that

1:24:23Mel Barfield: my views have not no no not at all

1:24:26Jack Chambers-Ward: I've said it

1:24:27Mel Barfield: I had my little micro rant and then I thought oh no sorry Mark if Mark made you put it in there views of my answer

1:24:33Jack Chambers-Ward: I know some people do I think some people I know fairly well in the industry do if they're working for big companies or agencies or whatever but like we say if you're talking about your interests if you're doing other stuff it doesn't guarantee using Chris as an example you know him travelling at the weekends to go do ballgame conventions or writing about ballgames in the evenings and stuff doesn't conflict with his agency ppc job in the same way that me doing stuff in the evenings with my like voiceover stuff and music bits and pieces and things like that doesn't conflict with the day job at candor in the same way for me it is finding a balance and i've gotten terrible at sort of just everything thing is just here is the latest episode of the podcast here is the newsletter here's the thing and it's just constantly branded content for want of that phrase and i try to do every now and then a little thing i'm not not a good content planner i don't go in with a conscious me neither thing but i do try to mix it up as much as i can without overstepping the boundaries yeah and like my advice i think would be just like have that conversation yeah hopefully your boss is cool enough you know i like you said i have a good example here well mark had already built he's got a strong personal brand of his own so if anyone's the most controversial person at candor it's mark like he has started more fights on linkedin than anyone else i know and he's coming up on like a hundred thousand followers on linkedin or something ridiculous yeah

1:26:09Mel Barfield: i didn't know i knew he was a big deal i didn't know it was that much i think it's like 80 or

1:26:12Jack Chambers-Ward: 90 ,000 or something like that and so and he has started many fights been blocked by plenty of people in the industry for calling them out and all this kind of stuff and but then again that's positioning where that is mark's personal brand he is known as a bit of a i will call you out on your bs type thing people will make a claim some people respect that like but exactly and some people will see that and be like oh right yeah i want to follow that person because they do call people out on their bs then you want to you know debunk myths or people do the classic you know graph goes up linkedin thing i'm like yeah but show us the x and y axis mate like actually show us the numbers is a 5 000 increase from 1 to 50 or is it like 10 000 to 5 million like okay i'd be i'd be impressed if it's the second option i bet it's not but you've just got like little little graph up there and i think we're all kind of i said the personal brand i didn't really intend to become a secondary face of candor in a way and it was an interesting experience going to my first brighton seo i started working in 2021 so it would have been end of 2021 early 2022 i can't remember which one it was and completely overwhelmed my first like conference of that size i've done little meetups and networking stuff it's thousands of thousands of people it's multiple days it's all this kind of stuff and i was just running around basically following mark around not knowing anybody or doing anything and then a couple of brightons later people were coming up to me

1:27:53Mel Barfield: and recognizing my voice can you introduce me to your friend and then mark's like

1:27:56Jack Chambers-Ward: what yeah it was it was a thing like oh people now know me as me not as mark's employee or the guy who works at candor like oh yeah you're the podcast guy or literally somebody literally recognized my voice and i remember i went to dinner um a shout out to a friend gus palojo who works at indeed uh brilliant seo and a really lovely guy and we were in a big group of like oh everyone let's go to dinner together and it's like 30 people and i knew like five people but i knew the person that organized it so we all kind of went together and gus ended up sitting next to each other and i think we'd connected on linkedin at some point but never spoken and we had a mutual moment of like hold on i know you from i saw you thing and it's like and i recognize your voice from there are you the and i was like i am the guy are you the guy's like oh yeah hey man how are you like hey yeah yeah and it was that little moment of recognition and And it's not like, oh, I'm such a celebrity, that kind of thing.

1:28:58Jack Chambers-Ward: It's weird, though, isn't it, when it happens?

1:29:00Mel Barfield: I've had it like, are you Mel from LinkedIn? I was like, are you Mel from IBC?

1:29:05Jack Chambers-Ward: And you're like, yes. Again, that's how we met, right? That's how we met, yeah. The little moments of, oh, hey, I recognise you. Oh, I've seen your face now. I've finally met you in person kind of thing.

1:29:14Mel Barfield: That is, in a nutshell, what personal branding is. It's, I would say, like shortening the gap between you and the people you're speaking to. I want to ask you really quickly what is your weirdest thing that you've posted about on LinkedIn mine's probably getting in a fight about pancakes

1:29:33Jack Chambers-Ward: the pancakes is pretty good that's pretty good I don't know if I've done anything particularly I'm probably talking about bad film stuff having very strong opinions about certain film sequels sometimes they're pretty controversial we'll talk off air

1:29:50Mel Barfield: about Superman 3. Oh, yeah. Because otherwise we'll be here.

1:29:53Jack Chambers-Ward: We'll get into the Superman discussion. But yeah, even those little things. So I, again, shout out to a podcasting friend of mine, Em from Verbal Diorama, is a huge diehard fan of Grease 2. And nobody...

1:30:10Mel Barfield: Michelle Pfeiffer, right?

1:30:11Jack Chambers-Ward: Exactly. Nobody gives a shit about Grease 2. But Em really cares about Grease 2 and has somehow found a handful of other people that also care about Grease 2. and going to like the London podcast show and hanging out there, people know Emma's degrees too.

1:30:27Mel Barfield: It's like because she's got like a...

1:30:29Jack Chambers-Ward: The full light jacket and stuff like that. But yeah, if you have a really specific opinion about things, if it's a hot take or a controversial thing or like, you know, without going too mad, don't be an anti-vaxxer. But like, if it's about films or if it's about how people do marketing, how we approach copywriting, how oh i saw this thing this other person's linkedin post and i think it's bollocks like call people out on stuff that can be a really good way of again being relatable creating that kind of engagement kind of discussion and that was a huge part of what we did on sequelizers well sometimes we would fix the obvious rubbish and then sometimes we're like so uh i know a lot of people like predator 2 but it's not as good as predator 1 saying that got your job and then mark messaged me like hey i'm a big fan of predator 2 gary bucey is very entertaining like i agree he's mental but he's somewhat of an entertaining and there have been much worse predator movies don't get me wrong but even those little things of sharing a oh i thought this film was bad or enjoyed this book or whatever can really transform the way people see you.

1:31:43Like you said, Mel starts talking about

1:31:45Jack Chambers-Ward: cheese and then suddenly people are like, I have a very strong opinion about cheese. I think blue cheese should be banned. It should be illegal. And suddenly it becomes this whole thing that you would have never had that discussion if you didn't highlight cheese. So yeah, sharing hot takes and strong opinions.

1:32:01Mel Barfield: Can I just have a little clarification on this though? Because cheese is pretty beige, literally. it's not that controversial but when people post a picture of bread roll and say what do you call this, where you're from please don't do that because that is painful engagement bait I hate it or pineapple on pizza yes or no and that kind of thing it has to be something that you genuinely love and are passionate about.

1:32:32Jack Chambers-Ward: Superman 3 is the best Superman film, nobody's ever said that before that's mad see see it gets a reaction I'm not

1:32:40Mel Barfield: I'm not gonna how can you not love a Superman film that has Richard Pryor in

1:32:45Jack Chambers-Ward: I'm a big Richard Pryor that film that film is we can't get into this but it is basically a Richard Pryor movie and also Superman

1:32:53Mel Barfield: I know that's exactly the best of best of both what you're telling me

1:32:56Jack Chambers-Ward: is you're not a big fan of Superman but you are a big fan of Richard Pryor

1:32:59Mel Barfield: oh I'm not gonna let that stand how dare you see this is this is how we do it

1:33:03Jack Chambers-Ward: see see this is it this is how we do it

1:33:06Mel Barfield: favourite Batman?

1:33:08Jack Chambers-Ward: an actor or film? actor I really like Pattinson I really liked Pattinson recently

1:33:15Mel Barfield: we stopped watching that Batman film because it was so painful Michael Keaton is the only acceptable answer

1:33:22Jack Chambers-Ward: Keaton's great well

1:33:24Mel Barfield: Christian Bale's very good

1:33:25Jack Chambers-Ward: yeah

1:33:28Mel Barfield: Adam West just to be

1:33:30Jack Chambers-Ward: no no no no Kevin Conroy from the animated series he was my Batman growing up the voice of Batman when I think of Batman I think of Kevin Conroy rest in peace but like yeah live action stuff I really loved the Batman

1:33:44Mel Barfield: I'm fascinated

1:33:46Jack Chambers-Ward: that you didn't we need to have a whole other movie broadcast

1:33:49Mel Barfield: it was just boring

1:33:50Jack Chambers-Ward: oh cinematography it's too dark it's very dark

1:33:53Mel Barfield: all films are too dark these days

1:33:54Jack Chambers-Ward: that's true I find myself

1:33:56Mel Barfield: trying to adjust the settings on my TV so we've gone way beyond personal brand now there is a relation comic books yeah strong personal brands and movie appearance all that kind of stuff um what advice would you give to the listener then the dear listener who wants to um start putting themselves out there and identify what to talk about in terms of personal brand

1:34:24Jack Chambers-Ward: think about what you like doing and i hate the phrase if you do what you love for work you never work a day in your life that's absolutely not true work is still work even if you love even if you're creating board games and writing about board games and you love board games it's still a hard craft it's still work you say how much you love tone of voice and copyright it's still hard i love podcasting it's a lot of work still but find something you like that you won't get bored of too quickly whether it's a specific niche or a particular thing and see what other people are doing and analyze what you like and don't like about what other people have done i think a lot of people go in and we mentioned that you know if you want to write you need to read that is an element of it like but which authors do you like and why and that's that's the key bit the and why

1:35:22Mel Barfield: The why is the important bit.

1:35:24Jack Chambers-Ward: So you can say, oh, I'm a big Stephen King fan. Oh, I'm a big whoever. Like, what do you like about Stephen King's style compared to, I don't know, Dan Brown? Like, it takes two huge authors, like completely different authors, massively prolific, sold multi-millions, blah, blah. They would fit in a few categories until you start niching down. And then a lot of people you get to, okay, so what do you like about Stephen King's books? specifically oh i actually only like it i just really liked the film i like i like the films yeah exactly and then but also that being a part part of that is see what other people are doing in that thing and ask why you like and don't like certain things and then be a nerd about it yeah so get into the details get into the thing so i'm i'm a bit of a stephen king fan i'm not the biggest stephen king fan i have a friend who is a massive massive stephen king fan and it's those moments of like oh yeah he wrote road to perdition and green mile yeah and you're like wait what wait the hot the horror guy like yeah yeah there's also there's this whole dark tower thing so he has this like multiverse where there's this guy who like travels through different time periods and there's this one about vampires but that also ties into the whole dark tower thing and the dark tower is kind of like a center of his multiverse like you've lost me already i thought he just did the clown horror stuff and a couple of things like no no no no there's a whole other thing there are people that don't like his horror stuff that just like his other stuff and that's fascinating to me that you can again niche down even further and get into that really specific thing so be a nerd about it explore it fully and understand and literally write down what you like and what you don't like so oh i like this creator because they are very in-depth and very open about their opinions but I don't like their presentation style and their production.

1:37:19Jack Chambers-Ward: I hate the way their videos are shot or I really like the way this guy's... I've had examples where I really want to listen to this podcast but it sounds like garbage and I can't listen to it. You've over-edited it or you're 100 miles away from your microphone and you're shouting across a room instead of being a reasonable distance from your mic and it's sounding reasonable. Or you're too close. Or you get too close and you get the proximity effect. Which is fine for voiceover, but this is a bit too much a bit too ASMR for podcasting.

1:37:47Mel Barfield: It's fun to lean in for effect sometimes.

1:37:51Jack Chambers-Ward: And again, being a nerd about production and stuff like that, how did they make the thing? Why did they make the thing? And I guess the third thing, tying those three things together, who influences the people you like? Like, I found that with bands and with writers and with so many things of, I really like this band. What are the artists that influence them? can you backtrack okay this band's from the 90s or bands in the 80s or the 70s influence them yeah like you take oh they they turns out they are actually a 60s kind of revival thing that happened in the 90s because they really like this band you've never heard of and there's a whole other genre that's just opened up that you didn't know about and that happens so much with oh this author was a big fan of this person or this film is actually kind of a remake of this one you've never heard of oh right okay so that opens up a whole nother can of worms there so like did you

1:38:47Mel Barfield: know that this sample from this song is from this song and then perfect yeah yeah yeah i think behind the scenes stuff is is fascinating i love it i love that kind of behind the scenes i think the in a in a nutshell what we've talked about today nerding out on things and getting really nerdy about stuff and being openly nerdy. I think a lot of people are too afraid of stuff feeling cringe or people judging them or talking about things that might have got them bullied at school for being a nerd at school. Dungeons and Dragons. And I think now you're a grown-up now. You can nerd out about things.

1:39:30Mel Barfield: And when you nerd out about things, other people are like, oh, I love that thing too. Or I don't like that thing. As you say, they're starting an argument and a friendly argument about how Superman 3 is the best Superman film. That sort of thing is rapport building with people.

1:39:47Jack Chambers-Ward: Yeah. How about you, Mel? What are some of your personal brand tips to wrap us up?

1:39:51Mel Barfield: I think I've just said it, really. Nerding out and stuff. And sharing, knowing where the line is, just one tiny diversion before we wrap up that is related to this. Because I sometimes see people get loads of engagement for moaning about stuff. and then they think oh well that got loads of engagement or being ultra ultra ultra vulnerable about something and then i sometimes spot that it's become part of their content calendar relating this time to share another tragic story every two weeks and so i would say don't just be aware that there's a line that you need to find and be comfortable with about sharing stuff from your personal life that gives people a flavor and insight into your life and who you are as a person but don't let that become your entire personality and personal brand because you've always got to remember that the at the bottom you know the bottom line is we're trying to get either work for ourselves or build our personal brand as a professional there is that professional element as well and I think sometimes people can forget that they can forget that the clients can see everything you're doing the potential clients can see everything you're doing so if you're repeatedly talking about there's the pratfall effect in there where if you if you share a little bit of something you've done wrong in the past and learned from like oh that's quite endearing and we you know that's that's makes me like you more because you've shared a vulnerability but if you constantly do that and it's constantly woes me then that can become your personal brand as well so just that's my my tip is to be mindful of how stuff looks to clients but on the flip side don't let that put you off posting about board games

1:41:35Jack Chambers-Ward: people are offended by board games and you're in a you don't want to work with those people exactly well again you eliminate the people you don't want to work with exactly uh for people watching or listening on social candor how can people follow you mel keep up with what you're

1:41:47Mel Barfield: up to i'm chronically on linkedin um it's melanie barfield barfield is like garfield the cap with a and if you go to allcopymail.com my links are all on there and please listen to Indie Business Club podcast if you're listening on the Canva Canva? Sorry, Canda Not sponsored by Canva Not sponsored by Canva The Canda podcast and yeah, thank you so much for having me it's been very comfortable. Where can people find you Jack?

1:42:15Jack Chambers-Ward: Find me here in the Canda studio with canda.co.uk as our website I'm on LinkedIn as well, you can find me in most places, JLW Chambers on pretty much everything. The thing I'm trying to push at the moment is our YouTube channel. And at time of recording, we have our conference coming up in a couple of weeks. So if you are locally based, you want to come down the 24th of September, we're doing Search and Orange XL, our first ever conference, expanding out of our previous networking and meetup stuff. And yeah, you go to searchandorange.org and find everything there. Very nice and easy to find us.

1:42:51Jack Chambers-Ward: Been a pleasure, mate. thank you so much for finally joining me.

1:42:53Mel Barfield: Thanks for having me. Bye!