Personal Branding, Visibility and the Truth No One Tells You, with James Martin

26:31Katy:They don't know how to just look at the camera and start talking. And I think a lot of that is because they don't know how to be themselves professionally. Because think about this, back in our day, you know, in the 1700s, we were told that we had to be professional at work, whatever that meant. You had to hold a lot of yourself back. And the only time people might see a big dose of the real you would have been on a Friday with the beers, going out, having a laugh, but then on Monday you had your game face back on, you had to be professional. So you've gone through multiple levels of that. I mean, you can go down another wormhole being a woman told to, you know, we have to be good girls.

27:14Katy:You don't want to be seen as loud or arrogant. It could be a British thing. You don't want to come across as showy offy or like, you know it all, you know, Who do they think they are? So there's multiple layers going on, which I've only really scratched the surface with. So when people sit down in front of camera and they think, well, I've got to be myself. What the flipping heck do they do? It's really tough. It's incredibly tough. And I think it's also very important for us to also let everybody know that it's tough for everybody at the beginning. like when you start anything it's difficult like even the people that you see online now who are seemingly so natural at it they're only natural at it because they've done it 10 hundred billion fucking times yeah yeah yeah yeah so I think I think it's really important to um just yeah let everybody understand that that it's it's not normal god I mean and like especially like we grew up because we're so old um in a world that there wasn't social media god I mean We grew up in a working industry where social media wasn't even a thing.

28:26Do you know what I mean? Or it was very early on. Do you know what I mean?

28:30Katy:We could make mistakes. We could get drunk and do other stuff. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even have a... I'm so glad I didn't have a camera, phone camera in my teens, because I'd probably be in jail. Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? So, like, it's... Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's a totally different world. It's moving so quickly. And, like, now we're seeing the introduction of, like, AI and all these other things. So it's moving again. Um, now let's look at this from, let's look at this from, you know, I suppose the only way or the only lens we should, which is a marketing perspective.

29:02I think that's probably a good thing to try and like, obviously help people. Um, now, you know, going back to, you know, there were traditional ways in which you would essentially get work before. Um, and those have changed now. So, you know, there's still classic print media, radio, television, do you know what I mean? All the print, all the things that you could do, networking events, those will still work today. Do you know what I mean? I think just a lot of people have potentially forgotten about them a little bit because of this new thing that everybody's telling us that we should do, which is build a personal brand online and you'll be rich and famous.

29:39Do you know what I mean? And you'll fly on a plane and all that kind of shit. Hang on, hang on. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's kind of worked for for you and i though right what's that what flying on a plane i can't fly yeah

29:50Katy:yeah building a personal brand getting invited to talks and things yeah yeah but i i would say that what we've done is we've built a recognizable reputation because we're superior you mean you mean we've like no no no no no no no no because i think i i think yeah sorry damn it sorry sorry to disappoint you there um but like when i think anybody can design a brand do you know i mean we've seen this a lot online you know if you are good at you know the visibility game and you are good at um the perception game and the marketing game you don't have to have fuck all evidence or proof that you can do the thing you say you can do and you can be seen and regarded as a brand and powerful and almighty you can do power moves like this on camera where you bring your hands together in a sort of you know and purse your lips people will just like listen to you yeah and just give you and just chuck money at you yeah and just yeah but they don't even know why they're doing it yeah but the thing is like i think there's a big difference between like brand building and like reputation building because reputation is essentially built on evidence and like what exactly what you've done you've got 400 years because you're that old of like evidence um that is sorry you burst your lips there calm down james that's the fourth time you said it um so um so when you kind of go through the process.

31:14You know, you'd be building all this evidence and you've got proof of that evidence because the world can see it. So you've built a reputation as somebody who's incredibly trustworthy. Like there are people online with hundreds of thousands of followers who can't do fuck all and don't know what they're doing and have just copied other people. So when a client or somebody actually finds them to go and work with them, it all falls apart anyway, because there's no evidence to back it up. The person that they are online is very different from the person that is real human.

31:44Katy:So we're talking about masks. The mask slips off and then it all falls apart. Yeah, I think you can obviously manufacture perception like you can manufacture a brand. I mean, I can go and find very clever people and I can go and regurgitate their words and regurgitate their... I mean, there's people who go around the internet, steal people's websites and Photoshop their face on that person behind their work. So I mean, what's the agenda? Like what is the long game win here? We talk about the things that, you know, build good reputations, things like craft, you know, the kind of strive for mastery, the patience, do you know what I mean?

32:27Like it takes a long time to build a good reputation. Therefore it builds a long time, it takes a long time to build trust, a trustworthy brand where people will eventually think you're a safer commercial choice and they'll give you money. but we kind of got off on a tangent here so but like this is the whole yeah the whole point is like it's very easy to manufacture that perception and you don't have to have evidence you can just play the game do you know what I mean and but there's no longevity to that so let's go back to obviously like how do we find a way in this new world to market ourselves in the most effective way.

33:05Katy:Authentic way. Authentic way yes real way most aligned way authentic to you whatever you want to call it so yeah good pickup there by the way. Sorry I grew up with boys it's the Bantz all the way. I love it it's great I love it so yeah I think it's really so like firstly you know we like when we talk and I said like both that there is a side to this kind of personal branding or this self-marketing thing that is really really important so it you know you do have to be quite clear about how you help people do you know what I mean and what you do like when you build a recognizable reputation you have to build a reputation around something do you know I mean that's the only way to build a reputation I've got this um I call it like the deeds model and it's something that I share with a lot of people so you know d e e d s so your deeds dictate your reputation oh I love that so what I think is the first d is you've got to decide what you want to be known for so that's the first d the second the first e the second the second e the first E is educate yourself in alignment to becoming that person.

34:22So do everything. I'll kind of go through them first and we can go through them individually. Then the second E is evidence the process of that. The second D is demonstrate that evidence as proof in the right areas in front of the right people. And then the S is stay in the game long enough for it to compound and i think that is the that is the biggest issue i see when i work with creative people when i work with other businesses when i see what people are doing online um they're very energized for 30 days and then they go fucking hell nothing happened i'll do something else yeah it's true and for like no no fucker knew who i know i keep calling people fuckers i actually loved me but like no but it's the British the British in me I'm not Australian so for the first like eight to ten years of my um marketing myself and showing myself online nobody knew who I was and I just kept on going and suddenly bang now it's a totally different game now um uh it's not you know it's not what it used to be do you know what I mean but I also do a lot of research and generationally ask people what they think about different things our generation

35:44Katy:are sick of it you know what i mean they really are they are so sick of it but i also think it's because we're at a different stage of our life where we do have a better understanding of what energizes us and what doesn't and we also know that our when you hit like 40s you know you do start to understand that life is finite and that you could be halfway through. So you start to reevaluate and readjust how you want to spend your time because you understand how important your energy is to you. These young bucks coming through, they're like gobbling it up. Do you know what I mean? They're like, perception me up, son of a bitch.

36:26Do you know what I mean? Give it to me. Grow the audience. Go on LinkedIn, sell all these fake things, you know get my email list up blah blah blah but like we grew up um I would like to think knowing that a career is like when I became a designer I didn't know if I was going to be a designer forever but I was like this is going to be 40 years 40 50 years a career whereas now careers the way the world work what is working like potentially they're going to be three to five year careers yeah totally I mean which is like a totally different mindset so um you know I also think there's like so I mean you know I think our generation have got a very important role you know we grew up outside climbing trees you know being able to walk the streets and you know be let out you know just make sure you come back when the bell rings do you know what I mean all that kind of shit um whereas like that's obviously changed now and like it's definitely something I'm doing with my son to try and like outdoors as much as possible.

37:28No phone as much, well, he hasn't got a phone, but like no screen TV or whatever it is, like as much as possible and like outdoor adventures being creative and all the rest of it. So again, we've gone off on a fucking tangent. So the point is when it comes to like this marketing thing, like you've got to, I think it's very, it's much easier when I think of like a brand as this recognizable reputation, because the reason I'm doing that is to reduce friction, like I said. So the way I reduce, so when I decide what I want to be known for, and I understand what the thing I do, who it helps, do you know what I mean?

38:05Like who are the kind of people it helps? It becomes very easy for me to break down what are the things I should be talking about. And I think the other issue when it comes to especially like a social media um kind of um vessel like we do judge um wins based on metrics do you know what I mean like oh our followers aren't growing up oh nobody's seeing it oh blah blah blah blah blah blah which is a human thing do you know what I mean like we are quite competitive things we like to see things move we like to go I put x amount of effort in here, I would like to see X amount of reward. That's kind of how we work, isn't it?

38:46So I think when you think about it as just like taking up space and the only like visibility to some degree is important because if nobody has access to all the things you've done, and this is the other thing about evidence, John, I mean, and perception and proof and all the rest of it, like you can have Katie. You can have all the evidence in the world, like bucket loads of case studies, bucket loads of great testimonials, bucket loads of all sorts of like people just going, oh my God, she's amazing. She's so funny. She looks so young and all of these things. But you can have all that evidence.

39:30If nobody has access to it, it means nothing. do you know what i mean so this is where we have to change that evidence into proof because when it's proof and we put it out into the world it's accessible because there's no way anybody on this planet will be able to have access to all of your evidence so you've got to package some of that up in content in website case study in testimonials you've got to put that out somewhere for it to turn into proof which then allows a positive perception to be built of you do you know what i mean so the evidence proof and trust all very different things that they're part of the same kind of journey um so whenever i speak to anybody who has this struggle of like i don't know what to say i don't want to you know there's the classic well i just don't want to dance on camera like that is that for me is a i think i have actually said that in the past as well i went

40:31Katy:through a phase of saying that a couple of years ago yeah but what you were doing is you were trying to protect yourself and protect your decision and that's okay like you were like basically this is i'm not dancing on camera well no but you told me how good you were dancing the other day oh i'm dancing on camera now this is the irony of it all carry on please continue you're a walking contradiction it's amazing i'm a terrible person no do you know what you're a human yeah exactly we're all fucking contradictions it doesn't fucking matter this is the point this is what I'm discovering yeah I want people to embrace that I don't want them to package themselves into this tiny little neat box because it doesn't allow them to be human which is really really fucking important

41:17Katy:Adobe is sponsoring today's episode and I wanted to share something I think is genuinely worth your attention it's called Kick and Create and it's built around a simple idea creativity builds confidence these girls only football camps combine sport with creative workshops so alongside training on the pitch girls are learning how to design kits create videos and express themselves using adobe express and what's interesting is the shift this creates when creativity is part of the experience girls are three times more likely to want to attend football camps which says a lot about what's been missing i spoke to simon morris vice president of international marketing at Adobe about this and he put it really well.

41:59Owning your work you know is a radical act of confidence and so we believe that when a girl designs a mascot or a football kit and sees it you know looking incredibly professional it changes her internal narrative from I'm just a student or I'm just a footballer to I'm a creator and we know that from our research girls often feel more comfortable in a space where it includes a creative outlet and it gives in that safe space to find their voice. And so, you know, whether they're an athlete or a digital storyteller or both, we really want to give them the agency to define who they are on their own terms.

42:34With Kicking Create, it's really designed to build on top of Bloomsbury Football Foundation's fantastic girls-only football camps and help the girls create that kind of community, their creative capability and confidence through the creative workshops that we're going to run with them.

42:50Katy:There was also a brilliant campaign alongside it called adobe fan made you could design patterns for kits that will actually be worn at the adobe women's fa cup final and for every entry adobe donated 10 pounds to bloomsbury football foundation to help fund more places for girls just brilliant the winning kit will be revealed on the 31st of may check out the link in the show notes to find out more it's quite interesting that um from my point of view it's quite unique i'm i'm an editor of a platform which i've been running for nearly 17 years and as journalists we're taught that it's not about us the story is not about us so you always sort of stay in the background you're behind the camera you're behind the mic you're behind the keyboard it's not about you um so that does something over time yeah that you become so um almost like kryptonite it's almost like kryptonite the thought of having to put yourself out there which i think is almost as nauseating as saying being your authentic self but you know what i'm saying i realized when i um when i was changing things a couple of years ago that i had to sort of put my personality more for front and center um and also had to sort of really focus on the community which we've kind of always done um so it was like shit how do i do that.

44:16Katy:So I've gone through this process. And I think essentially what I am slowly realizing is that A, I'm human and there's no way I can manufacture this. There's no way I can sort of control this. The best thing, the easiest thing, which goes back to the first of your deeds, is to just say, I am me and I'm messy and I make mistakes and I'm not perfect. I'm not super intelligent i'm pretty bright i'm hilarious i am the first person you call to take to the pub i'm fucking awesome by the way that took me 45 maybe 46 years to say out loud i'm fucking awesome yeah and i'm messy and i can be a massive dickhead and i can say the wrong thing and i can make mistakes and i can sometimes wake up in the morning and not want to go on camera and sometimes i'm like, give me the mic.

45:07Katy:Um, you know, and that has just, when you have that epiphany, everything just naturally happens. I just don't overthink it. And it's, it's a beautiful thing I'm going through at the moment. It's, um, whether I'm like asking people questions at events, which I bloody love doing or reenacting a beastie boys video, it all just feels natural to me. And it's building a reputation around a platform that essentially has kind of been me creative boom is me so that friendly that warmth that um desire to help people that's all me it was just a case of shit how do i now pivot and well i didn't really need to i just needed to start showing up more as they say yeah but i think i think what i think what you um are alluding to um well it's a confidence thing isn't it oh 100 i think it's oh yeah i think people's like if we look at that kind of two there's obviously the individual side of it and there's probably there's probably like as you say like within your role or your job your job was to be in the background and celebrate everybody else so that's instilled that was my identity yeah but there's probably also you know we don't i don't want to go into it but there's also probably some childhood trauma there's also probably some god i didn't know we were going to go there yeah i know but like i was you know i was sexually abused as an 11 year old boy by my maths teacher do you know what i mean like so but like that for me um really like messed with me and it's i'm still fixing bits and pieces of that today do you know what i mean and i don't say that to kind of just you know i talk about these things i think it's important for people to to know about the people and the background and stuff like that but i think i think we've got to be very a lot kinder to ourselves yes as we go through our journeys as people because everything that we have gone through has made us what we are it's not our fault do you know what i mean like but when we get a little bit older yeah we start to go fucking hell i'm gonna die that's the one thing that's the one thing we've got in common.

47:28So I'm like, well, what do I want to do? Do I want to like try and be good energy when I get into the room? Do I want to try and help more people? Do I want to put stuff online to help other people? Do I want to do this? Do I want to do that? Yeah, I have control over that stuff so I can do it. I don't have control over what happened or the past. And if I, if I live in the past and the past is dead, I essentially die. So I'm always trying to continuously like push forward and try and use the time I've got for good. And I think like that is like, I think what you mentioned there about confidence, it's you made a decision of who you wanted to be.

48:09And that wasn't necessarily like, I want to talk about branding. Do you know what I mean? It was like, I decide who I get to be. So I decide that I can be myself and I can be messy and I can, you know, really focus on my community and I can build the Creative Boom community and I can go out more and I can go to be in front of more people. You have got to, you have decided that and through making that decision for yourself, you've built the confidence, which has allowed you to do the other things. So that is why the first D of the Deeds Model was so important, because I I think a lot of people struggle to present themselves online because they haven't decided who they are.

48:57It's so true. Or who they are to other people. And I know for a fact that when you do decide that, everything gets a little bit easier because you know what to say. Yeah, you know what to say and you know who to talk to, don't you?

49:10Katy:There's a scene in Eat, Pray, Love. Oh, Elizabeth Gilbert. Oh, I love that film. and he's like can you just imagine if you like open this up the brain and you just let let all of that go and then the light rushes in it always reminds me of that it's the all of the things that have happened to us and like you say traumatic things you know the the things we've had to process and go through that we've had to carry um and we're worried about coming across like this or that and we worry about what people think and essentially we're human and we're vulnerable and we're so bloody lovely and we just want to be loved and we want to be accepted and we want to do well in our careers 100 % but it's the the fear and the terror of getting it wrong and then I think that there's several things that start happening in your 40s you realize you you start to feel more comfortable in your skin you know your 20s are messy your 30s are like still you're still trying to figure yourself out and then in your 40s it all starts to slowly fit into place but you're not i'm not suggesting that you get to your 40s and like i have arrived no yeah yeah i suppose you understand what success means a little bit more to you don't you it's not so driven by what other people would consider success to be whether that be money career c-suite or whatever it is, you're like, well, do you know what?

50:35Like maybe success for me is a three day week. Do you know what I mean? Maybe success for me is, you know, X amount of money. Do you know what I mean? But then, you know, I mean, the success is so different for so many people. Again, I think that is an issue that's happened online where success has been dictated a certain thing. So people's confidence does get knocked when they're not reaching this six-figure month or this you know seven-figure year or doing all of these things all these other people are doing they're like oh is that what's successfully why yeah which is why like social media has has like

51:18Katy:been quite problematic because people and people go on and off that you know they have like breaks from instagram because they're just instagram you open it up sometimes and it just reminds you even if you're doing really well it reminds you of how shit your house is which it probably isn't how shit your clothes are which they probably aren't and how shit you are which you're definitely not um yeah yeah it's a real it's um it's built it's a comparison trap isn't it essentially it's designed to make you feel insecure so you buy stuff that'll hopefully fix the problem you know classic i shouldn't be saying that because i cover advertising on creative boom yeah but you're good the point is i mean it's quite it what surprised me the most about when i started to do my reels to camera and things like that i was i'd just gone through a horrific back injury i'm at that time of life i'm going through the menopause or blah blah blah blah cliche cliche cliche but whatever real and it's me yeah it's my it's my lived experience yeah and that was supposed to get a laugh.

52:28Katy:I'm sorry. I thought you were going deep and just kind of like, I thought you were controlling the emotional bit with humour. So I left, I stepped back. I can be emotional. I'm fine. Okay, sorry. So it was just a sort of, you know, like you see almost like a Blade Runner thing or what was the other one of the 80s? Tron, you know, when it all comes together to the horizon and then it just sort of goes. it was kind of like that moment and i looked at the camera and i was just like fucking hell what am i gonna fucking say and i was just like full of joy and just didn't give a shit anymore not that i don't give a shit but you know what i mean yeah and i just had this healthy anger how dare i allow um all of this fear and the worry of what other people think and various other complicated layers of being a woman probably being northern being from certain background not having a lot all but um and suddenly going fuck it i'm just not getting in the way of myself and no one's going to get in my way and the thing that was really surprising was that it was all just me um i didn't put anything on and it's just got better and better because it's just as you say once you get that first bit sorted, everything else just flows.

53:53Katy:Now, this is interesting. People I thought had got their shit together, and this is where we're human, would come up to me afterwards in my DMs, at events, emailed, like big reputational people, people who run massive studios, people who are, you know, doing really amazing work. And they'd say, Katie, we've seen you on Instagram. You're amazing. I was like, yeah, yeah, enough of the ass kissing. What's your point? What do you want? How do you do it? What's your secret? How do you do it? And I'm like, absolutely, my mind is just blown. And that has added to the newfound confidence. And it's made me realise that I can just go for it.

54:39Katy:And I always say to them, I don't know, have a herniated disc, lie on the floor in pain for a year. And then you'll come out the other side and realize that actually we're not going to get out of this alive and what is the point in overthinking it yeah i love that um how is your back now is it good better i'm getting there i'm getting there i've got nerve recovery going on still so fuzzy legs but you know we don't going back to what you said earlier we don't give ourselves enough credit no we should be so damn proud of ourselves yeah there's this wonderful saying um i can't remember what i heard i'll try find where I heard it but it was um always measure backwards do you know what I mean because what we what we tend to do is we always um like we always think about the things that we didn't quite achieve or the things we haven't done yet and we often forget like the things that we're potentially doing now and the things we only dreamed of three years ago or five years ago so it's a really good practice whenever I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed or a bit under pressure, you know, and thinking that I haven't quite hit my target, you know, or my objective, or this hasn't launched in time, or I said I was going to do this week, this, this week, I always like measure backwards and I go, well, do you know what I mean?

55:59Like this last five years has been a bit of a wild ride made by James. Do you know what I mean? You're okay. Do you know what I mean? So, and I think it's really, it's a really important practice for people. Have you ever read the book,

56:09Katy:the courage to be disliked no but i would love to read that because that is that has essentially been one of my biggest problems yeah it's um it's um it's all basically built around adlerian psychology and it's very much what you've been suggesting and talking about which is the kind of um the philosophy is you can only control what you can control and you're not in control of the thoughts of others so why even worry about it and i think that you know we've essentially like being conditioned now to worry about what other people are doing all the time um and again like with the I don't want to keep talking about it but the deeds model you know and a part of like a big thing for me is like goal setting and having some sort of idea of the things I want to achieve because when I know the things I want to do it allows me to stay very very focused and like going towards the azimuth that I'm that I'm trying to hit so it allows me that when other people win or whenever people are doing well, it allows me to, rather than under my breath, go fucking wanker, how dare they do well, which is what I would do in the past.

57:16I now go like, fucking good for you. You're going out there and you're doing your fucking thing. Do you know what I mean? And that is fucking awesome. Do you know what I mean? So yeah, I think just having like, it's a really, for anybody that hasn't read it, I would definitely, I would definitely suggest reading it because it's, it's this really lovely book written in a very different way about these conversation between these like this kind of master and the mentor these two people and they're talking about this stuff and it's it's all about adlerian psychology and it's it's wonderful it's definitely worth a read i would suggest for people who are struggling to understand like

57:50Katy:that themselves a little bit you have a wonderful personality and your reputation online is one that definitely comes across here and i get the impression that's because you've gone through a similar thing to me you've just kind of leaned it there's another cliche leaned into who you are James yeah your voice went deeper again well done I need to lift up my mug yeah yeah yeah I think it's um like I said I mean I've I hated myself for a long time John I mean after the abuse I ended up I got kicked out of school kicked out of home at 17 did loads of fucking drugs drank a lot and I didn't speak to my parents for a very very long time do you know what I mean so like it's I feel seen so yeah so for me like I I'm trying I've got a bit of a problem because now I try and do everything for them and I try and constantly pay them back even though I don't need to but I know how much I let them down and myself down so every day I probably overcompensate a little bit but um I prefer to do that than um anything else um but yeah I think it's like I think we've all got and I think this is again like the whole social media um thing which I don't like I said I'm I'm very blessed it's like I wouldn't be here talking to you without it do you know what I mean there's so many like I've met so many great people I've been able to do so many great things things I never thought I would do from a guy who lives in England um in a little village um like I never I never thought possible.

59:25It wouldn't have been possible without this social media vessel. So like, I'm not going to sit here and slam it because it's given me a whole load of opportunity. But, um, you know, I think it's also, it's very easy to, um, just believe that everybody's life is great and yours isn't as great. And that does have a negative impact, um, when it happens

59:46Katy:continuously i feel seen i am got kicked out of home when i was 15 i went through a lot when i was a kid um and it took me and i i kind of resonate i really kind of like wow this is amazing i don't think i've ever met anybody that has basically just said out loud their own experience which sounds very much like my own um i was angry with my parents for a very long time um also all sorts of similar things i don't i won't go into but it was wasn't until i saw a counselor in 2020, I think, when I realized that actually I was carrying a lot. And the counselor, all she said was, oh gosh, Katie, you really did have a traumatic childhood.

1:00:27Katy:And I just burst out crying because my parents are lovely people, but they're children of the war generation where you just swept everything under the carpet. So we never talked about anything. So I had to deal with a lot of stuff on my own at a very young age and went a bit nuts and left home and did the same thing and took a lot of drugs and got into a lot of trouble i was living in a bedsit and crew on my own at 16 years old going around outside picking up two p coins so i could like save up enough to get some chips or some skunk yeah i'm picking up fag butts and like taking out the tobacco you know that not like i haven't told a lot of people about this but um that counselor saying you know gosh katie you went through a lot and you were just a child and your parents were the adults and i was just like whoosh yeah and it's been getting better ever since because you let go of a lot of the uh anger and and stuff you didn't even realize you were carrying my god yeah so yeah my anger was a big one for me like i was my my trauma came out anger anger towards anybody of any authority anger towards anybody like view in my way like the when i would get drunk it would go i'll be quite good i was i'm four years sober now but like going i went for a whole period of like i would get to a point and anger do you know what i mean like i was very very short fuse um anger was my go-to emotion as well and i think it's just because of like i said it's this what happened is the past um and like i said it's um maybe we should chat off maybe we should off pod yeah look we we will we'll have a we'll talk more about um what we've uh what we've been through because i feel like we we might help each other a little bit but james um we're talking about personal branding and visibility personal isn't it yeah but i guess like part of this when people are listening to this they might be like looking for clues and you've given so much rich advice on on those who really want to build a reputation they may may have just gone freelance they might be trying to sort of attract clients from a specific niche and it's figuring out how to to do all this without um without swearing yeah but without putting a mask on um because when we say be yourself it sounds easy in principle but it's actually probably one of the most difficult things to do because we're still trying to figure out who the fuck we are true um yeah but again yeah yeah i think the being yourself thing we should probably just um ignore to some degree um and what i mean by be ignoring that to some degree is that's a that's a lot to kind of take on john i mean like we're all trying to figure a lot of stuff out um so to then actively go and air that online is probably not something you want to put on your shoulders.

1:03:40Because I think that's when you start to kind of package yourself a little bit tight now. But I think I think there are a few things that you can work on, like when especially when it comes to like your brand or your business or whatever you want to call it, because essentially, that's what we're trying to do. If we are marketing ourselves is probably to be seen to hopefully make some money so we can pay for food and pay really expensive fucking oil and gas and fucking all the other shit we got to pay for now so i think there's like again like i'm very big on the things i can control do you know what i mean i know i you know we talked about a little bit earlier about controlling this reputation that reputation element and i think there's this thing called the reputation grid that i that i that i think about and it allows me to just be very conscious and making sure i'm doing the right thing so So a grid, a quadrant, that's four for you Norfolkers.

1:04:37By the way, my wife, she's from Southport. Do you know what I mean? Oh, you're in. You're in the clan. You're fine. I'm in. I'm already in. Yeah. So, yeah, so there are four things that we can control and we can work on. And number one is integrity. The second one is competence. The third one is narrative. And the fourth one is community. So when I think of integrity, it's like, do your actions actually meet your values and your words? Like, do you come across as somebody, you say one thing and you also are that person. Do you know what I mean? So integrity, competence, like craft and the kind of process of like the impossible and never ending process of mastery, because you can never become a master.

1:05:24But your craft, the things you do, the thing you want to be known for, like work on that every single time. You've got to be competent at the thing you can do. So can people rely on you to do that thing? Community. Like, this isn't necessarily like audience. This is community. These are the people who back you, the people who are on your side, the people who are saying your name when you're not in the room. Like, the only reason we were talking is because people mentioned me to you. That's the only way it happened. That's community in action. Do you know what I mean? That is how it works. You've got to have people who are on your side, like supporting you and doing all that.

1:06:04And you can control that by, again, integrity, competence and all the rest of it. And then narrative, I think, is another thing. So the story that you are essentially in control of, like you are in control of the things that you put out into the world, like you are in control of the services you present, you're in control of all the other things you do. So when you work on the reputation grid, those four things in the reputation grid, which you are in somewhat control of, I believe things get easier. And you don't have to worry about visibility or reach or data or metrics. Just focus on like living up to your values, focus like getting much better at your craft, focus on like a really close knit community and network that support each other.

1:06:53And also just make it very clear what you do, essentially. And if you can do that, if you can do those four things on repeat, you're going to be in a good place. Again, patience, compounding, like these things do take time. They're not going to happen in a week. They're not going to happen in six months. But after a year, two years, three years, five years, 10 years, you know, with your humanness being allowed to be a little bit wiggly in between, you know, you can evolve with it. you know I think you'll be in a really you'll have a really good foundation for a strong

1:07:28Katy:reputation that accidentally rhymed but yeah I love that we've got into rapping yeah I'm not very good at rapping a little sprinkling of your own fairy dust or does that sound a bit creepy you know hey if you've got some I love it I need all the magic I can get mate do you know what I mean well thank you James for joining us on this sunny spring morning and I look forward to catching up with you on Thursday in our spark. It's been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

1:08:00Katy:And on that note, if you were hoping for a neat little checklist on how to build your personal brand in 30 days, I'm afraid we've completely ruined that for you. Instead, you've got something better. Thanks to James Martin, our guest this week. Do the work, be decent, stick around long enough for it to count. Revolutionary stuff. huge thanks to james for the honesty the chaos and um for not being australian after all if you enjoyed this one give it a share send it to a mate who's currently spiraling over what to post on instagram and remember you probably don't need to dance on camera unless you want to in which case go for it and i'll see you there don't forget we're back on thursday with our bonus episode of The Spark and James will very much be sharing more chaos and fun.

1:08:48Katy:See you then.

1:08:53Katy:Thanks again to Adobe for sponsoring this episode. If you want to learn more about Kick and Create, head to the link in the show notes.