Amelia Sordell: How to Create a Personal Brand

0:00Amelia Sordell: We all have a personal brand. I think the words personal brand often turn people off. Failures make you human. They don't put clients off.

0:10Ben Hanlin: Welcome back to What's the Trick? I'm your host, Ben Hanlin, and this is the podcast where I sit down with the world's most creative people to try and understand their creative process. How do actors, comedians, musicians, magicians come up with ideas and turn them into reality? We get into that process. And this week's guest is personal brand expert, entrepreneur Amelia Sordell. Now, I've been a big fan of her for years. I've been watching her content on LinkedIn for years now. So if you don't know, she's got a quarter of a million followers on LinkedIn and she's all about personal brand. How did she get there, though?

0:47Ben Hanlin: Bit of her backstory. It is she at 21 started a fashion brand and it got big really quickly. She was in shop. She was about to do deals with brands like ASOS. and then it all went bust and she's been really honest about this it pulled the rug from under her and it she really felt it but she picked herself back up she got some other jobs and she ended up in a job in recruitment and while she was there she was building her personal brand on linkedin to the point where people within the business were asking her to train other people on personal brand she thought ah there's an idea here she quit her job and she started clout agency and that was in 2020 and in a short time she went from zero to four million dollars in turnover and that was a personal brand agency and their clients were some of the UK's biggest CEOs, founders, companies all building their personal brands online and in person.

1:44Ben Hanlin: The way she created that was incredible but again she's been really honest about her story and there were problems. They scaled too quickly there was rapid growth she was burnt out she was trying to balance work life home life during a divorce whilst raising two young kids so she scaled all that back it's a lot more simpler smaller agency now she does a lot of consultancy on personal brand so that brings us up to speed but the question i suppose is why did i want to speak to amelia because i love personal brand and i think as a creative i've been doing personal brand without realizing isn't it?

2:20Ben Hanlin: For 20 years, I am my business. And I think all creatives and solopreneurs really need to invest and think about their personal brand as we dig into here. And if you're not exactly one of those two people, but maybe you work for a bigger company, you think, well, how does this apply to me is having a strong personal brand can help you with other things in life and your career opportunities. So I do think this episode is going to apply to everybody. And I also want to look at the creative side of a personal brand. So what do we talk about? We cover how you'd grow a LinkedIn audience and why LinkedIn is so important in whatever we're trying to do right now, possibly for most of you.

2:57Ben Hanlin: And also what a personal brand actually means and how do you build one? And the other things as well about social media and creating content. How do you come up with ideas? How do you stay consistent? So this episode is extremely honest, as you'll hear, as Amelia is not scared of showing all sides of her, her wins, her losses. There is some slightly naughty language as well if you've got any young one listening on speakers or anything like that, so just be aware of that. But in essence, this is going to be a masterclass in personal brand, consistency, creativity, social media. I think you're going to get a lot out of it without any further ado.

3:32Ben Hanlin: Here is What's the Trick with Amelia Sordell. let's start with personal brand so for anyone listening can you sum up what that is your

3:45Amelia Sordell: personal brand is essentially a reputation at scale um people love to gatekeep very simple concepts like this by over complicating it trying to make themselves sound clever um but to me your personal brand is everything it's how you act it's how you dress it's how you greet people it's whether you shake your hand with someone when you meet them it's how firm your hand trick is it's what you wear it's how you answer the phone it's did you snatch the coffee from the person in Starbucks or did you say thank you so much hope you have a good day like all of these things become part of your personal brand and I think the issue that I have maybe a little bit more with the word personal branding at the minute is that most people see this sitting on social media exclusively and therefore don't realize that reputation is so much deeper than just the surface level content you share like you you can be a amazing motivational inspirational person online if you're an arsehole in real life then you don't have a strong personal brand so you've got to you've got to see it as a full body i think as part of who you are rather than just who you pretend to be on yeah that's

4:38Ben Hanlin: that's a great summary something i heard once was um when somebody says what's a brand right and this is this is like an old marketing thing but i heard what is a brand is what people say about your business when you're not in the room yeah and a personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room yeah 100 yeah 100 and oftentimes like and i can say this from experience

4:59Amelia Sordell: the relationships I've built off my offline personal brand. So doing things like this, meeting you, like meeting people at events, etc. have been more fruitful than the things that I've done online. So I think it's important that people understand that personal brand isn't just something you build. You already have one. But if you're not actively thinking about what you want it to look like, what it does look like, you might not like.

5:19Ben Hanlin: Okay. And for somebody listening that might think, well, why do I need one? So I get what it is. But why do I need to start thinking about one and having one?

5:28Amelia Sordell: I suppose I kind of said it just then. Everyone has one. Like we don't we don't need one. You have one already. Like it's it's like an asshole. Everyone's got one. Like everyone has one. But like what it looks like is up to you. Like you have a personal brand with your children. I have a personal brand with you. Like, you know, we all have a personal brand. I think the words personal brand often turn people off because they think I don't want to be an influencer. I don't want to be a creator. I don't want to be in the spotlight. So I don't need one. But like what people don't realize is they have one already.

5:59Amelia Sordell: And you don't need to post on social media to build a strong personal brand. Like if you're employed, for example, like network with people. Go and speak to the senior leaders in your business and ask them for some mentorship. Go and ask for extra work. Like promote your ideas. Talk up in meetings. Like these are all things that are going to build your personal brand that don't necessarily involve you posting anything online.

6:20Ben Hanlin: Yeah, because if you've done those things you've just listed there, what are those senior people in the business going to say about you when you're not in the room? room exactly let's dive into clout so let's kick off at the point maybe when clout launched yeah and just quickly give us the headlines of what happened has happened in the last few years so you've launched the business just quick top lines what happened the kind of clients you took on

6:43Amelia Sordell: and where clout has evolved to so when when we first launched when i say we like everyone does that right when i first launched the business it became a we but we started with an i um when i first started the business I really had no fucking idea what I was doing I knew that I was on to something um and we were in an opportunity I've spoken about this before but we were in a world I don't know if anyone can remember the hangover of COVID but we were in a world where the banks weren't allowed to take your home away if you didn't make mortgage payments like credit card companies couldn't come after you for missed payments because like everything was on pause so I was like perhaps slightly naively like what have I got to lose like there is never going to be an opportunity where i can quit my job and maybe it all go wrong and not be okay did you

7:25Ben Hanlin: if you don't mind me asking did you take out a bit of money no no okay fine no i had no equity

7:30Amelia Sordell: i had nothing i didn't put any cash into the business i just thought fuck it i'll quit and

7:34Ben Hanlin: just see what happens okay and so and with that because people have these thoughts every day i'm

7:38Amelia Sordell: going to quit my job and i'm going to do this thing i love yeah did you have a client on board

7:42Ben Hanlin: so you because right no pambi most people would say i'm going to work in the evenings get one That's correct.

7:49Amelia Sordell: That is the great way to do it. That is a really sensible way to do it.

7:52Ben Hanlin: As soon as they sign that contract, I'm handing in my notice. You quit.

7:55Amelia Sordell: I quit on a Friday, started on Monday with no clients signed up. One thing I would say is this. I'd already generated a sort of following a community of about 13 ,000 people on LinkedIn at this point who were following me specifically for personal branding advice. And I knew that was going to be the focus for Cloud. I didn't know it was going to be a personal branding agency, but I knew I wanted to start an agency that had humans at the center of it. So that's what we went on and doing. The second thing is I knew I wanted to do this from April. I actually left my job in August. So from April to August, I basically planted the seed with my then CEO, shout out Joe Curtis, absolute legend.

8:27Amelia Sordell: I'm obsessed with him still to this day. And I was like, we should be doing workshops because it was a private equity company that basically invested in recruitment companies. And I said, we should start putting on workshops to teach recruitment companies how to get the consultants to build their personal brand, because that's one of the reasons they brought me into that business to help the kind of team kind of get up to speed with that. He was like, yeah, I love it. And I was already getting inbound messages from particularly people in the recruitment space, because that was the place I was working and saying, do you train people?

8:55Amelia Sordell: So we started running workshops where I didn't get paid anything extra from my salary. So it was great for the business because they were making extra profit for, you know, my salary. All the leads were coming inbound to me. So they didn't have to add any workload to anyone else. So it was a win-win for them and a lose-lose for me right from a financial perspective but and a lot of my friends at the time like what are you doing like you know you're you're not getting paid for this stuff like it's extra work for you whatever and I was like yeah but what you don't understand is I'm gonna quit and I'm gonna do this full-time so if I can get five or six workshops training sessions you know strategy sessions whatever it is under my belt in the time that I am here where I've got a safe paycheck I know I've got money coming in like it's all good by the time I leave I've got that down pat and I know how I can go and sell that and I've got then testimonials that I can prove that I was doing a good job too

9:44Ben Hanlin: Do you know what's quite good about that is what you've to sum the up what you've done is you've gone I've got this idea I'm going to test it for free and quickly Yeah

9:51Amelia Sordell: and get paid to fuck up about it right like it didn't matter whether it went well or badly like I was still getting paid because that's it

9:57Ben Hanlin: if you're going to run a coaching or workshop you've got to test it test it test it you've done six or seven or eight or whatever it is it's funny like when I started my I do keynote speaking and all I wanted to do was do it for free for five, six, seven of them just to get it rolling and then eventually start charging for it. So yeah, getting it tested and up and running is good. So you see a quick job and then you've started Clout. So let's go from there then. So you've started. What was the headlines of how you got clients? What did you offer? What was the first few years of Clout? Very quick.

10:27Amelia Sordell: So I, as I said, quit my job on the Friday, started the business on the Monday. On that Monday, I did an announcement post. So many people don't do this, right? No one puts on their social media i'm starting this business here is how you can support me which is basically what i did um and that post got hundreds and hundreds of reactions hundreds of comments got reshared with loads of people and i won my first two clients that week um so that was

10:48Ben Hanlin: kind of step one step two was and so can i just break just so you won two clients so what just very quickly what are you offering those clients they're gonna be on a retainer but what do you do

10:58Amelia Sordell: for them it's so it's a great question because at the time i was like i don't know they were like we need help with this and i was like sure how much is it gonna cost i don't know 900 pounds great like okay that was basically the conversation i the first retainer i won was with a c you know ned ceo um paid me a certain amount of money each month to write content for him and help him grow his business help him grow his business and generate inbound leads for him on linkedin on linkedin specifically and then the second um client i won was quite a large recruitment company like still one of the biggest in the UK here to date and they wanted me to come in and train their team so straight off the bat I'd already made my monthly salary from two clients great

11:37Ben Hanlin: which is great cool then what happens fast forward a couple of years just give us the the the story

11:44Amelia Sordell: arc in a couple of years yeah so because I was so proactive in building my personal brand because I knew from my history as a recruiter that people buy from people and I was pretty successful in my career in recruitment because i understood that and so i'd post content about what i was doing and i dm ceos on linkedin and and have a conversation with them rather than sell to them so i was able to win contracts relatively simply and retained and decent terms which if you were from recruitment you'd be surprised because no one works retained everyone's on a contingent contract you've got about one in five chance of getting paid for the work you do so it's a very tough industry which is why recruits have a bad bad rep because they're just spraying and praying hoping that someone's going to pay.

12:23Ben Hanlin: I used to work in recruitment.

12:24Amelia Sordell: Well, there we go, Ben. We understand. Great place to cut your teeth in the industry of any kind because you learned so much. So yeah, I applied that kind of methodology. Started building my band, posting as much content as I could on LinkedIn because I knew that my agency was going to be directed towards founders and CEOs there on LinkedIn. Kind of obvious decision. And then yeah, over kind of the next 12 months, I got so much inbound business off the back of LinkedIn. I had to hire a couple of people. By the year end, the following year, I think we were a team of seven. By the year after that, we're a team of 17.

12:55Amelia Sordell: We went from zero to four million in revenue in around three and a half years.

13:00Ben Hanlin: So you went from zero to four million in revenue in three and a half years.

13:04Amelia Sordell: Yeah, it was it was a wild ride. But what I will caveat that with is that sounds very impressive. And people love to headline that kind of stuff. I exited for this. We've done this. I was working literally every single God given hour of the day. I never saw my kids really um my weekends i was working my evenings i was working i was unhealthy i was going through a divorce at the same time i had three lawsuits for my business i was probably a really well i know i was a really bad manager like i just didn't because we were growing the business off the back of the business coming in yeah and i'd never had any serious management training before i had a team before but it was like four people and my management style was like we're

13:41Ben Hanlin: going from a to b you good and they're like yeah like let's go and that only that only works for

13:47Amelia Sordell: a certain type of person um it doesn't work for other people and so i never really invested in working out how to manage a team and therefore we'd have a lot of churn like people didn't get the attention they deserve i didn't have any middle management to support me either and the ones that we did have probably i didn't give the training to to get to the level they need to be so

14:05Ben Hanlin: it was chaotic i will say but fun and within that kind of formula in turnover and all that growth in essence just so i'm clear you're working with a handful of companies mainly big ceos yeah trying to speak to them and build their personal brand and project them to the to the wider audience predominantly through LinkedIn yeah right that's okay quite cool and then what happened from from

14:27Amelia Sordell: there then roughly um so today yeah I mean it all kind of blew up I guess in 2023 and it got to that point where like we'd outgrown the sort of startup phase and we were now into the scale-up phase and normally when you get into scale-up phase you have senior operations people senior you know all of these things all the layers which we didn't have right I was it was a franken business I was just pulling people in where there was holes and constantly backfilling various different things and it just sort of like blew up I guess a little bit in my face and we scaled down very quickly um I would say part forced like we had a lot of my team leave in one go which I understand why they did um but also I burned out like I you know I so loosely brushed over and sort of laughed about it But if you've ever been through a divorce, if you've ever been through a lawsuit, imagine going through four of those things at the same time as growing a massively fast growing business.

15:24Amelia Sordell: I just had nothing left to give. And if I'd, in hindsight, if I'd got help like year two, like it would have been the best decision I've ever made because I'd still be running that bit. Like I'd still be at probably at 100 headcount now. I'm probably making 50 million a year. Like the growth trajectory of where we were going and also as an area and expertise, personal branding has never been more important, right? So it kind of blew up on my face a little bit in 2023. So we scaled everything down, which I've loved. Like I've loved having a much smaller team because that works best for me. And it works best for the team as well.

16:00Having that more one-to-one time and we can do much better work, but less of it, but much higher profit margins, obviously.

16:07Ben Hanlin: And this is always the problem with agencies, right? Is that you're the ideas machine. And then you put a team around you to try and learn your skills. Scale your skills. Yeah.

16:17Amelia Sordell: Which is almost impossible.

16:18Ben Hanlin: And then it gets to this point of going, then you need to take yourself out of the business. And you grow and then you shrink and go, actually, no one's doing it quite as well as me, maybe. So let's just rein it in again. But also in that shrinkage, I suppose, has the market changed? Because obviously, have people gone, I don't want to spend thousands a month on my personal brand. Has it changed? Where is like personal brand at right now?

16:38Amelia Sordell: Do you know what's so funny? I was literally speaking to my friend Charlotte Mayer yesterday. She runs an amazing agency called The Fitting Room. Like they do unbelievable work. Like next guest for sure. She and I were talking about this yesterday. So I met her because she was one of my clients. I've met a lot of my very good friends because they were my clients. And she was saying, do you think people are spending in the same way as they are, as they were in 2021, 22? And I was like, no, absolutely not. Like we were charging five grand a month, which was pretty decent for us. And we did very well at that.

17:06Amelia Sordell: we did a good job and we've worked with some very big founders like i'm very lucky to have some very good testimonials from people who we did an amazing job for but people don't need to spend that anymore like you look at ai you look at um also the cost of bringing this in-house now we've now got a solid six years of personal branding being relatively mainstream in in business so there is a solid at least let's say three years someone could have been an expert in a specific field like growing the founder brand growing a personal brand like rolling out human-led marketing within a team so it's cheaper to bring it in house the thing that we're doing the most of at the minute so agency we no longer we don't take any new clients on for that anymore um my career has massively evolved since starting the business like i'm so grateful for clout because it gave me the platform like it gave me it gives me the social proof like i've i've done it like i'm not just another person out here who's like build your personal brand like here's how to go from zero to a million followers in 90 days because that's not real you pay for those followers and like show me where your, show me your receipts, where are your, where's your income?

18:05Amelia Sordell: Where's the revenue? Where's the bank balance, right? I've done it. I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt and I've done it myself. I haven't paid a team to do it for me. So I understand acutely how to do it. And I'm grateful for that experience. But now where we're going, it's like, I'm a consultant. I do advisory work. I'm on the board of a couple of businesses where I'm in that kind of CMO, like, you know, human marketing role. So it's great because I have a much smaller team. I'm able to really embed into these businesses and help them grow this initiative out in-house, which I actually think is where this is going.

18:38Amelia Sordell: I'd be very surprised if the big personal branding agencies that exist in the UK and the US are existing at the same level as they are today in five years time. I think it will be, there'll be agencies that are like you go to for the, like maybe the first six to 12 months, like understand how to do this, like get the strategy, like whatever. and then as you grow you will bring it in house because it's cheaper it's better and you get a

19:00Ben Hanlin: better result from it question uh the phrase two word brand so i've heard this before of people think when you think of your own personal brand can you get your personal brand down to two words and uh a person i always think about this is someone like there's a personal trainer james

19:16Amelia Sordell: smith who one of my favorite accounts to follow yeah so james smith if you don't know him he's a

19:21Ben Hanlin: personal uh trainer but he's massive millions and millions of followers he sells uh online courses on how to do this he built his entire brand off two words calorie deficit so his angle on fitness was being a calorie deficit he made about a thousand videos with calorie deficit at the core of every message and you look at people like joe wicks which was lean in 15 that was his thing and then i think of even you i've been following you for years and your brand you every post you did for years was personal brand personal brand two word brand what are your thoughts on trying to get your message and your identity into two word brand is it a thing you

19:55Amelia Sordell: think about or uh you know it's really funny so i'm big on positioning because i think if you can land your positioning as a business and an individual then you you've won the game like because then it all is execution like it's yeah most people it's not an execution problem it's a positioning problem most of the businesses that we speak to most the founders that we speak to are like we've been posting for 12 months and we're not getting any leads it's because no one

20:15Ben Hanlin: fucking understands what it is that you do yeah tell me you're the person that does this yeah

20:19Amelia Sordell: what do you do tell me because i can't tell from your content yeah um i think it's i think it i think two words two words is it's a great it's a great thing right like two word brand like it's a great someone some that's someone else's brand like they've coined that term um i i think it's i think it's a great way to look at it um i don't know if you can fit it into two words like lean in 15 right three um and personal brand i would actually even argue my thing is just fucking post it like my whole brand is just fucking post it and that comes in the form of promote your business promote yourself promote your friends like i am such a like promote yourself like i want everyone to win like there's so much opportunity in the world and yet so few of us get it because

20:59Ben Hanlin: we're too scared to promote ourselves so and with that the reason i asked that question is because a lot of people and you're talking about positioning is i have it myself there's i'm multifaceted right i do multiple i want people to go oh ben hanlin he's the guy that does this but in reality i do about three or four things so when you're working with somebody and you're looking and they're saying this is all i do and you're going yeah we need to narrow this down how do you

21:24Amelia Sordell: how do you do that i suppose it's a great question actually so i look at um like strategic concepts or projects that we're working with clients in there's three different buckets we need to fit one is like what's the thing that people are going to resonate with so once we've identified your audience like let's say the primary goal of building your personal brand is to generate leads for your business or the ceo of a business that's doing 25 million you want to get to 100 million i've got a client like that at the minute what who do we need to attract to make that happen right so the first bucket is how are you going to resonate with those people well for me like my ideal customers are founders other executives etc so i'm going to share a lot of my content about my business journey my failures my fuck-ups the things i've done wrong what's you know the fact i was speaking so candidly about the fact i was a crap manager like we've all been there at some point if you've run a business yeah these are all things that relate to those people so all of a sudden i have affinity with them fantastic they like me they trust me the second thing that you need to do is think about how can you teach people something that you know how to do so if your business is for example working in your marketing agency that specializes in performance you might want to put a whole series of content out about like here are some of the things my team are working on right now that's 10x this particular client's thing here are some trends that we're seeing at the moment in the agency that's actually made a massive difference to the bottom line of this particular client right so that's like this authority stuff so you won't get as much like views and engagement on that but the people that are viewing that content are exactly who you want to be selling to and then finally you have stuff that sells you like this is your social proof right testimonials talking about wins like you hired someone you promoted someone you won this new client you did this amazing thing for this new business like you've just reached your hundredth customer you've got your first customer like whatever it is that sells you because it's showing people that you're great rather than telling them and if you can hit those three buckets whether it's a personal brand strategy or a brand strategy you will generate money and the hilarious thing about this ben is 97 of social media generates zero roi absolutely fucking nothing and yet as a society in business we spend over 230 billion dollars a year on social media and yet only three percent of that spend produces an roi and that's because people think and business owners think because they don't understand you know really social media they don't see it as a mark you spoke about marketing being a creative part of a business marketing is sales it's sales enablement so if your socials have a hundred thousand followers and you're

23:43Ben Hanlin: getting no sales from it you suck like your social team is not doing a good job if you are have you

23:50Amelia Sordell: got five thousand followers and you're getting five thousand sales a month you're winning you are doing a better job than 97 of the people online so i wish people would rethink brand and social and marketing away from the kind of like jazz up department we need followers like measuring i've seen so many so many business owners be like oh but we have 10 000 followers and i'm like you have none of them in your ideal customer base so like it doesn't like why do you

24:14Ben Hanlin: care like that's not a measure of success for me no one's liking any of your content yeah what's

24:18Amelia Sordell: the point yeah but also like even if they were liking it they're not the people you want to sell to anyway so i don't like how is that a thing that we're talking about so yeah something you've just tipped on there is ego right of going it's vanity and and i think taking individuals so many

24:31Ben Hanlin: influencers and people go I've got a million followers got half a million followers and you're like yeah but half of them are in the other side of the world and can't buy your product or can't do anything with you so it's all getting away from the ego and going actually let's look at like you said earlier quality let's go for the people that actually you want to talk to or moreover they

24:47Amelia Sordell: follow you because you have a million followers like I've seen loads of big creators and I don't want to trash them because they do an amazing job and they're all business owners and they all get leads from their following right but if you've got let's say five million followers and you're only getting a hundred new clients a month let's say like whatever that's a really shit conversion rate yeah and that's normally because when you get to that tipping point of a million followers people follow you just because you look like you're someone it doesn't necessarily mean that they want to follow you because they want to buy from you it just they've seen other people follow you and they're like oh this person's interesting let me have let me find out a bit more about them if you make your content really niche like i'm talking like you're an orthodontist for dogs right and that's what you talk about does your dog need braces like is that a thing i have no idea i'm just made up but fine it might be i mean we are in 2026 and like people can be whatever they want to be like if you want to be an orthodontist for a dog like go for it but um who am i to tell you but if that if you make all of your content around that then you might get 500 followers but they're all people who need dog braces so it's a win you're winning right and And also you asked the question earlier, does everyone need a personal brand?

25:53Amelia Sordell: Like I was speaking to someone recently who runs a cleaning, a regional cleaning company, right? And they were saying, well, they used to make 300 grand a year. They're now doing 150. Like, should I invest in ads? Should I start doing social media, whatever? And I was like, no, just go knock on doors. Go knock on doors and tell people this is what you're doing. Introduce yourself. Give people a gift. Like go and have like message boards up in your local area. Go and contact local schools and say like we're giving a discount to all the parents. Like do the face-to-face stuff. Not every business needs to be on social media.

26:22Amelia Sordell: Like if you can build an amazing business where there is ability to see social proof that you know what you're talking about. So Google reviews, Trustpilot reviews, whatever. And you're a regional business that, you know, can't spend on social media or hasn't got time to. Just go and do it the old fashioned way because no one does it anymore, Ben. Everyone goes, we need to post on TikTok. I'm like, you could, but you could also just go and knock on someone's door and make a sale instantly. Like it's entirely up to you. Yeah.

26:48Ben Hanlin: let's dive into LinkedIn so obviously a lot of your output and what you're specializing in is the LinkedIn side of it but so I think I'd imagine there's three there's three types of people probably listening to this right now somebody that is on LinkedIn and probably does post a little bit somebody that is on LinkedIn and never posts and stalks yeah and which is probably 90 % of people on LinkedIn it is actually that is the statistic I've listened to your content I mean it's sunken and then the third person listening to this right now might be thinking are we really talking about LinkedIn? It's so uncool.

27:19Ben Hanlin: I'm not even on it because it's just boring and rubbish and it's a job board. So let's just quickly sum up. Where do you think LinkedIn is at right now? Because all of these social media platforms keep flip-flopping and changing and they're not, I don't think, in their best places ever, a lot of them. Where do you think LinkedIn's at at the moment?

27:36Amelia Sordell: LinkedIn is a Franken platform and I love LinkedIn. My whole career's been built on LinkedIn. But it's in this weird place right now where like 50 % of us understand that it's an important tool and that employers are looking at us there. You know, potential leads are looking at us there. Like one of the things that I do when someone, like when I got the call to kind of come in here, the first thing I did is went on LinkedIn and was like, can I find you?

27:59Ben Hanlin: So you use that as your social proof?

28:03Amelia Sordell: Yeah, I want to make sure you're a legitimate person. It's not a scam. You're not like, I want to know who you are basically. And I will always go to LinkedIn first because LinkedIn is the place, I know this sounds really terrible, but it's normally the place that people care about the least therefore it's the most telling about them right um people really think about their instagram they really think about their tiktok they really think about their website but like linkedin's the bottom of the pile so for me if you've if you've not put a load of effort into really making your shop windows on all department floors look great then we're probably not aligned especially as my business is really big on linkedin so i'm going to be working with someone and they're not doing a great job on linkedin or they've not optimized something then there's probably not it's probably a misalignment if

28:41Ben Hanlin: you like on values if we say should we say and also just there might be people listening to this who are going well I work for a big company I can't be bothered with this but if you ever want

28:49Amelia Sordell: to look for a job what okay let me let me just break this down for you 70 % of employers in 2025 said a personal brand is more important than a resume and I know this for a fact even 15 years ago when I was a recruit or less than 12 years ago when I was in recruitment the first thing I would do is I'd look a candidate up on LinkedIn I wouldn't even look at their resume I just see their name I'd paste it into LinkedIn because as I said earlier like one out of five chance of getting paid right and I know the first thing my client's going to do when I call them up to talk to them about your profile is they're going to look you up on LinkedIn so if your profile doesn't look good I'm not going to bother sending it doesn't matter how good you are for the job I have a very limited amount of time to place that role and if your LinkedIn profile is not optimized I haven't got time to tell you how to do it so I'm going to do it for someone who is and everyone does that even to this day.

29:36Amelia Sordell: So if you are in the category of people who's like, oh, I don't need to do LinkedIn. If you want to have a job, if you want to have a future opportunity in any capacity, whether it's your internal one or an external one, you've got to optimize your profile. You've got to make yourself look worthy of being hired.

29:50Ben Hanlin: And I've got a theory on this. So taking that, what you're saying there about having a presence on LinkedIn, because that's the first place people look. My theory is, I haven't spoken this out loud, so tell me what you think, is that this year, next year, you're going to see more and more celebrities uh what your famous people whatever you want to call

30:08Amelia Sordell: them joining linkedin yeah 100 like snoop dog just joined recently did he yeah 100 and my theory is this that it's the business social media platform right and we all want to be running businesses like even people who are full-time employed now are doing side hustles and linkedin is the place where you potentially could meet your customers for your side hustle so i think it's look i would love to get get my teeth into the the linkedin strategy of where they want to go because i think if they could come become the home of business and and and people who want you know amazing careers that would be game-changing like they have a billion users now they'd get up to four billion if they were able to nail that positioning we talked about positioning earlier

30:48Ben Hanlin: hello it's ben we're gonna take a very short commercial break and regular listeners know that that doesn't really mean anything because we don't have any sponsors so it's just a little interruption from me hello uh this is amelia she's very to the point isn't she very honest she knows what she's doing when it comes to personal brand and i have actioned even since doing this a few things just by being inspired from this conversation which i'll actually probably explain at the end of this episode what i've been doing since listening to this so go and give her a follow on instagram on linkedin and if you're on linkedin so am i and give me a little look on LinkedIn.

31:25Ben Hanlin: We can be business pals. We can do a corporate lunch. I don't know what happens. Right. That's that. What else do I need to tell you very quickly? Thank you. If this is your first time listening, I'm on this mission to try and build the world's biggest creativity podcast. And I'm doing it from scratch, one listener at a time. And all I need you to do, really, a couple of things. You'll hear this everywhere. Do hit that five star review button. It takes about five seconds you could do it right now on apple and hit that five stars makes a difference if you've got 20 or 30 seconds just hit a review actually type out a review the more that helps is it helps all the podcast apps um understand that your podcast is good and it'll show it to more people the other thing i'd love you to do the one thing really more than anything is just whatsapp this episode to somebody that you know if you think there's one person that is a solopreneur or a creative or trying to build a business that could benefit from having a better personal brand or learning a bit, just send them this link and say, hey, I think you might like this.

32:27Ben Hanlin: And then we've got one more listener. And if we keep doing that, the whole thing will grow. Previous episodes as well. There's been loads of great ones. We've had Matt Barry last week. We've had Matt Edmondson. We've had Simon Squibb. Andy Nyman was probably a personal favorite of mine writer actor and uh co-writes with derham to go back and have a look and also all of the dms you've sent me as well have been lovely i say this every time um as sad as my little ego is it's really nice to know that you are getting enjoyment from this show it makes me want to do more so thank you and i do reply to every single dm so you can hit me up on instagram at ben handling anyway that's it for another week we drop an episode every friday so make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss next week's.

33:14Ben Hanlin: Right, let's get back into this one.

33:15Amelia Sordell: This is What's The Trick with Amelia Sordell.

33:19Ben Hanlin: Actually, no, I'll tell you what I was going to do. I'm not going to ask you how you built your 250 ,000 followers because I think you've talked about this before. Just posting. Yeah, exactly. Basically chatting to you. And also with social media, the way you'd have done it five, six, seven, eight years ago might be different. So actually the question I want to ask you is if you had to start today and get back to 250 ,000 followers or a large number of followers of the people you want, the right quality, but what are your kind of go-to strategy that you would adopt today from scratch?

33:45Amelia Sordell: I'd be very, very clear on what I was about. First of all, I'd also be very, very clear on what I was offering. So whether I'm on there to build my career, so I'm employed and I want to get a network of people in my network who may be able to help me in the future, or whether I'm selling something like what is your offer? Like that's really, really important. And then from there, I would make sure that I'm posting as much as humanly possible, specific content for the people that I'm trying to attract. We spoke about that earlier. So if I'm trying to attract founders, I'm going to talk about running a business.

34:10Amelia Sordell: If I'm trying to attract mothers, I'm going to talk about motherhood. If I'm trying to attract magicians, I'll talk about this trick that I'm trying to do. And I really suck at it, right? If I want to attract dancing on ice alumni, like, you know, whatever. Like that, you know, you want to niche down, right? And then the third thing or the fourth thing that I would do is I'd find a way to take people off that platform. Because, you know, we spoke about going from zero to 250 ,000 followers. That's great. Good for me. But what happens next? Like, what are those followers doing? So I'd probably start a newsletter or I'd have some kind of like gated live show where you had to give me your email address to come and attend which i do are both of those um and then i'd start accumulating a newsletter list and i'd send out an email every single month and or every single week or whenever i could to make them buy whatever it was i was selling and i if i did that consistently for 12 months i'd probably have a

34:53Ben Hanlin: million followers do you think yeah okay so let's move brent how many posts a week let's say

34:57Amelia Sordell: hypothetically i mean if you if you really want it if that was your goal to get to 250 000 followers

35:02Ben Hanlin: every day every day and one thing you just talked about you don't have to do that by the way to

35:06Amelia Sordell: build any kind of brand you could do it two three times a week but if you're trying to get from

35:09Ben Hanlin: speed perspective like every day okay and where would um things like commenting fit in because i know you've talked about this a lot comment on a lot of people's posts that kind of less volume

35:18Amelia Sordell: more intention so i comment on a handful of people's content a couple of times a week but it's always posts that i have a very clear opinion on a very clear knowledge point on and a very clear perspective on and i have i write it like a fucking paragraph like i'm not like great post ben love you i'm like interesting take like here's my perspective or oh my god thank you so much for sharing this this is actually my experience what do you think like it's always an intentional

35:42Ben Hanlin: comment okay and so you're doing a bit of commenting and then the other thing of you talked about before you'd obviously target probably people and message and things like you mentioned about throwing out your failures and i know why because it makes you authentic and it's your story yeah yeah so and i've seen this a lot you talk about i messed up here i got

36:00Amelia Sordell: this wrong we've done it on this podcast i was like i fucking sucked at a manager yeah well really I probably still do. Sorry, Hannah.

36:05Ben Hanlin: So some people might go, hold on. I don't want my potential clients to know that I'm rubbish. So is there a trade off?

36:14Amelia Sordell: So there's two things. There's two points there. Number one, failures make you human. They don't put clients off. And actually a lot of the business that I've won, I've won and they've said like verbatim to me. One of the reasons they came to me was because I was so real and I was so honest and I wasn't pretending that everything was cupcakes and rainbows. I was like, oh, it's been a tough day. I mean, like what a day. and people like that they gravitate towards that because they actually know that it's not cupcakes and rainbows like building a business is cupcakes and rainbows one day and then like razor blades and like cyanide the next you know what I mean it's like it's crazy um and I'm sure your career is exactly the same it's big big highs low low lows it's not an even keel career choice to do what we do right um but the second part of this is of course like I'm not going to jump straight on LinkedIn the day that I've had to make people redundant and been like I've just had to do this and it sucked because you know there's another person that's at the other end of that and you've got to consider their feelings and their perspective and you know and how it's kind of disrespectful as well to use someone else's experience which is also yours too to to win favor with other people when it's still real and raw um but in hindsight absolutely i'll talk about all of my failures like i said to you we said is there anything that is off limits absolutely nothing like i am not ashamed of anything that i've done could i have done things differently of course like we all could do things differently but if I hadn't done those things differently would I be where I am today probably not so you know lessons learned like I always think you get a good outcome or a good story and all of my content has come from my bad outcomes so let's dive into content then so where do ideas start with you what I would say is like I get inspiration everywhere so there'll be like 20 30 40 different things that I want to talk about off the back of this like you know there's already in my head is going like i find i find conversations with people really inspiring i find podcasts really inspiring i find walking in nature really inspiring i find talking to my team really inspiring anywhere that i get inspiration from i just record it straight away okay like i don't i document it i don't create i think it's probably a good way to think

38:13Ben Hanlin: about it so you funny enough i've spoken to comedians and they have the same there's any a lot of people who are creative especially comedians they're walking around their life with this this lens that's on yeah and when something feels funny to them yeah oh there's a nugget yeah i'm documenting and then they'll noodle they could noodle over it yeah same i

38:29Amelia Sordell: did noodle it like we were noodling on australia so noodling in australia probably means something different it's like miners opal very niche opal miners in australia they dump piles out of dirt while they're trying to find opals right and noodling is when people go in the dark of night when and like pump open the the gates that they're not meant to be there and they noodle through the pile to see if they can find any opals so it's kind of same kind of thing oh there you go so

38:55Ben Hanlin: So how do you document? Do you literally pull up your phone every time? And are you voice noting? Are you writing it down? What do you do?

39:00Amelia Sordell: It depends on the thing. But like, for example, on the way here, there's a podcast that came out recently that I wanted to talk about. So I immediately just recorded a video like I did. There's no point in me even trying to document that to then polish it. Like it's a current trending thing. So I want to get it out as quickly as possible. So I just put my face in the phone. I was walking down the road. People walking past me probably thinking who the fuck she thinks she is. Like, I don't care. So that's done. Well, a secondary point to that is I just I voice note myself all the time and I send myself ideas so there's an article i've seen a book i've read like i was inspired by this water bottle like i'd take a picture of i put it send it to myself in a whatsapp chat so you have a

39:31Ben Hanlin: whatsapp chat with yourself yeah oh that's so that's where you bank it so i store everything

39:36Amelia Sordell: because it's then easy for me to forward it to people or like remunerate over things like you know oh that's really good so i always it's like notes email it like whatever i can send everything there because you can store media there links there photos there like everything there so i

39:51Ben Hanlin: store things in my notes and you're right I can't store voice notes I can't oh so it's a whatsapp

39:56Amelia Sordell: chat to yourself that you then forward on yeah that's very clever okay so that gets you over

40:00Ben Hanlin: the time um so start with the idea so you get inspiration anywhere yeah if you ever have to before we let's keep with the inspiration do you ever deliberately search for inspiration anywhere

40:11Amelia Sordell: yeah I look like I think if you're a creative person you've got to consume to create like I whenever I'm in a stage where I don't like I'm feeling very uncreative or my brain is blocked or I'm having what I call a non-download moment like like writer's block you're desperately searching for something and nothing's coming it's usually because I've not been consuming anything I've not been reading I've not been listening to podcasts I've been listening to music I've not been watching new shows I've not been reading the paper like going for walks like whatever it might be um so as soon as I do that it all just comes back again so you have to consume

40:44Ben Hanlin: if you were quickly going i'm on the computer i'm so what's your do you have a quick go-to

40:48Amelia Sordell: yeah i normally will go through my newsletters that come into my emails so i've got i'm signed up to probably like 15 20 newsletters i love from creators i love and founders i love and whatever so i'll just go through there and see if there's anything that's interesting um i'll listen to podcasts and quite often i'll also just go and have a look at what other creators have just posted like what is happening in the world what are they talking about like what what are people pissed off about like I just want to I want to see what other people are talking about because that's how

41:15Ben Hanlin: we inspiration comes from each other right so I have a confession I do that with yours oh cool this is this is I have a similar thing so um I love the book steal like an artist which is first thing is find things you love and steal it it's a pre-validated idea so why wouldn't yeah so I if I'm having writer's block on LinkedIn and I I'm posting about six seven times a week I'm just a bit blurry at the moment. I've got half a dozen people that I know always make great. And I skim through your stuff. I see what gets more engagement, less engagement. So the audience is telling me what's resonating.

41:47Ben Hanlin: And I look at it and I'll be honest with you. I put an article out, a thing out last week, which was, I see you introduce yourself a lot. And I'd never done it. And I see it a lot. And I'm like, well, you're doing it. So I was like, OK, well, I can introduce myself. And I kind of, I didn't, obviously, you wouldn't. I bet it did really well, did it? It did amazingly well. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome.

42:05Amelia Sordell: no but i got that idea from someone else so i saw someone post this introduction post and i was like oh i've seen them do this before this is really cool so then i started doing it and i also do these things where i'm like get you introduce yourself to other people so there's another post that i do that go hi my name's amelia i built this amazing following blah blah blah and i did this through connecting with people so you take advantage of my community and introduce yourself to them i get thousands of comments from people being like hi my name's steve i'm doing this thing and it's really cool and that was inspired from someone else too nothing's original

42:31Ben Hanlin: Yeah. So you start there and then you've documented your idea. And then let's talk about because this will also give people an idea of going, well, how do we actually turn this into reality? What happens next? How does it go from idea, voice note, whatever it is, to six or seven LinkedIn articles a week?

42:48Amelia Sordell: So normally I have so I have to I have to caveat this with this is my full time job, right? Like I'm now a creator, a podcast entrepreneur, like creator first. Everything I do is creator first.

42:57Ben Hanlin: How many hours a week?

42:58Amelia Sordell: Two days I spent creating content. two full days or you split it across two full days monday monday tuesday i record between 20 to 25 videos a week um i and then that will then get transcribed and turned into linkedin posts so we've got 50 pieces of content straight away the best performers will get turned into carousels for instagram so again we've probably got like what 75 out of that and then i'm also writing content too which then if they do well they become video scripts and then they become carousels too so those two days produced i don't know like 200 odd maybe plus pieces of content and a lot of this

43:28Ben Hanlin: content at the core of it all is storytelling yeah so it doesn't matter whether it's a video a picture a youtube a tiktok a linkedin it's story and that's what i've noticed about you is you're always telling stories so what are your thoughts on storytelling and how you think about

43:43Amelia Sordell: constructing a story so if we think about like the creative process of constructing a story um for me it always starts with like how is this going to appear and appeal to the person i'm So if, for example, when I'm doing my podcast and I tee up a question and I'm speaking to a female founder who has just had a third baby and maybe she's breastfeeding and she's just, she's just, you know, done that before we got in the car. I might tee up my question with like, I remember when I was breastfeeding, it's fucking savage. Like this happened, this happened, this happened. So tell me about, tell me about your experience then.

44:16Amelia Sordell: And the reason why I tee it up that way, specifically designed for whoever it is I'm speaking to, whether it's an individual or ideally a mass audience, is because people want to feel seen. They want to feel like they're understood. Like if you think about meme culture and virality, there isn't special hooks or construct your video this way or construct your image this way. It's going to guarantee to go viral. The thing that makes things go viral is resonance and people feeling like they can see themselves or see an experience or something within that piece of content. so when you start your stories with the thing that people are going to see themselves in it makes them want to listen to the rest of what you have to say um so for example i might start something saying um you know i was fired from my first job after seven months of working there that might make someone else who had a first job they got fired from be like me too right and that is the goal of any piece of content you want someone to say me too right and then you can go into the kind of bones of a story and then most of my stuff i call it the content sandwich you open with like that piece yeah you then go into the context behind what you said you then go into the bones of it so you know the filling of the sandwich what did you learn what's the key takeaway like what kind of information you're trying to impart on whoever is listening or reading or whatever and then the final bit the bit of bread right underneath is like the call to action like what is the thing that you want people to take from this or do after they've engaged with this content are you asking them a question are you saying something that's bold enough for people to go again me too are you asking them to forward something comment something sign up for something whatever it is and that content sandwich is like basically how all good stories are told

45:54Ben Hanlin: wow thank you we could end the pod there if you want no that and don't know that exit no but that do you know what's really interesting the first thing you said there about um people going me too i can see myself there and this is what's really interesting about this series we've done is so i interviewed andy nyman actor and he talked about when he's a character on stage um he's based basically people in the audience are trying to say i can see even that character that's a bit crazy or i don't like him i can see a bit of me in that i've been in that person's position and we're all looking at fiction and people on tv and films and the reason we connect with them we're seeing parts of people we know or we're seeing people parts of ourselves in these characters one thing i didn't ask you actually about posting is other than time people are also thinking i'm scared of posting yeah the fear of posting because what if people see it and judge me and i'm scared of that how do we get because that must be a big objection you get a lot how do we get over this idea of you say just effing post it yeah but people go i don't want it i'm scared how do we get over that i mean

47:00Amelia Sordell: look it's it's like the same question of like how do you get confident right it's it's it's a getting confident at something just like getting confident at posting asking someone out on a date you know asking someone for a pay rise like whatever it is is all comes back to the same thing which is to just do it like confidence to post to you know walk up to strangers to speak on stage etc doesn't come from you thinking about how am I going to get confident it doesn't come from you listening to podcasts on it or watching youtube videos on it or reading a book about it it comes from you doing the thing and doing it over and over and over and over again to you get the result from doing the thing that you want right and actually confidence in posting or whatever it is that we're talking about doesn't come from you know a strategy or whatever it literally comes from having the courage to do the thing long enough to get the outcome you want so that you have the evidence that you didn't die and actually there is it is a good thing to do and once you have that evidence you then go oh okay this is not so bad but you have to keep doing it to get to that point

48:04Ben Hanlin: well that's let's talk about so sticking with confidence so something i've been watching with you the last few years is as obviously you've grown your personal brand's good you have been on stages so you're public speaking is basically my full-time job now oh is it just on stage yeah i love it well let's talk about this public speaking so it's a thing that people have to deal with in all sorts of life and a lot of people are scared of it and you probably had to deal with this quite fresh in the last few years of getting up to speed so let's talk about what was your the last few years are you a nervous ish person were you ever nervous getting on stage how have you dealt with those nerves and how have you built your confidence to stand in front of a thousand people 500 people and be as relaxed as you can be so there's probably like a bit of a

48:44Amelia Sordell: backstory here when i was a kid i've always been confident like i i don't think i would anyone

48:48Ben Hanlin: anyone would ever say I was a shy individual I'm getting those vibes I mean but I the thought of

48:55Amelia Sordell: speaking to strangers standing up and being in the spotlight all that kind of stuff made made me feel physically ill to the point where when I was a kid my if we were in a restaurant my dad would order my food because speaking to the waiter was so terrifying to me I just couldn't I'd be like I'd like I'd be like dad I want this and he would just do it for me shout out dad you're the best um but as like you know as I became a woman and like got into my career and as you said like even if you don't want to speak on stages we all have a stage at some point in our career we have to speak on whether it's you have to speak up in a meeting you have to present something back you've got to ask for a job ask for a pay rise up tell someone you're quitting like they're all versions of a stage you've got to find your voice you've got to find your voice and when i got to about 29 in fact i was about 28 i think when i did my first speaking gig so pre-cloud pre pre-personal brand um but i'd started talking about it already i was already posting content i was already like saying this human-led marketing is a thing particularly for service-led business service service led businesses and linkedin asked me to come and do um a talk so i went and spoke to 150 people about um employer branding and the importance of humans within employer branding and forgot every single thing that i was going to say what so this is the fear right is that you walk on stage and no words come out nothing so absolutely nothing what happened i sweated a lot number one um and number two i just had to think on my feet and it's every single thing that i thought and was scared of going wrong happened like everything deer in the headlights sweat under my arms sweat on my face forgot my words like all the look back all the pictures now lipstick on my teeth like every single thing that could have gone wrong went wrong yeah and And I suppose there's two things here.

50:33One, I know what I'm talking about.

50:36Amelia Sordell: So I was on that stage because I knew what I was talking about. So yes, I was panicked. Yes, I was fumbling my words. I think if that was being filmed, I would have been like, oh my God, like I really fucked that up. But the audience didn't. Like the audience probably saw a person who was a bit nervous on stage and maybe it was their first time. But they still ask questions. They still like waited for me to pause and like collect myself before I answered stuff, before I said what I needed to say. And I think the thing is, we all think that people notice our mistakes and that they care deeply about our mistakes and that they're never going to forget them.

51:11Amelia Sordell: And that's what really, there's a permanence to that, right? We spend our entire lives thinking in the future and in the past, judging ourselves, aspiring for great things and then judging ourselves when we don't achieve them or handling things in a way that we didn't want to handle them, right? But other people don't do that. They're doing it for themselves. Like 99 % of people don't give a shit about you. and I say that in the best way so you just got to get over yourself like get over yourself no one cares about it as much as you do and that first time was a total fuckery like could not have gone worse right but I didn't fall over could have gone worse but then the next time I did it I was like okay so what can I do to make sure that never happens again like yeah I'm gonna be nervous I know I'm gonna be nervous but like what could I do to make sure that at least I remember something of what I'm going to do.

51:58Amelia Sordell: So instead of preparing these ridiculous slides and trying to remember every single thing that I was meant to say word for word, I memorized my introduction because I was like, if I can introduce myself at least, then I can kind of just ramble for 40 minutes and it will be fine. Yeah. So I memorized my introduction and actually a friend of mine told me that as a hack, Harry Hugo, who co-founded the Go Agency that exited last year, like he's an amazing person. You go and follow him on social media. He told me, if you can just get your first 30 seconds right, it sort of calms your nerves a little bit because you've nailed it like yeah instant gratification and then oftentimes it will then tee you up to be able to deliver the rest of it so i did that the second thing is i just bullet pointed what i wanted to say so i had like literally just like written i think probably on my hand probably like rubbing all over my face yeah it's like pen biro down my face of like the points i wanted to hit yeah and it didn't really matter if i did it in the order that i'd prepared or not it just mattered that i hit hit those points and the second one i did like again wasn't my best work but it was better than the last one and that then gave me the confidence to go okay maybe I can do this again.

53:00Ben Hanlin: Do you know what's really interesting what you said about people don't care about and you're right you would there's that thing that the reason we get so nervous I think is because we care so much about what other people think of us but the most of the time too busy people are too busy thinking about themselves.

53:12Amelia Sordell: Yeah and thinking about people judging them.

53:14Ben Hanlin: Yes and the other thing that I think is really interesting so it's funny what you said that people hardly notice your mistakes I always find this as a performer things that I think is like i've had a terrible show and it's four out of ten it's three out of ten it's awful somebody might have seen that as a seven out of ten it's never as bad as you think out of ten yeah it's never ever ever as bad as you think it is in your head first of all 100 and the second of all is um i talk about this a lot is how bad people's memories are so there's this thing that they reckon that a week after seeing a presentation you only ever remember maximum 10 of it yeah so So an hour or two after this, they're going to have forgotten all of the fluff anyway.

53:53Ben Hanlin: They're going to forget the mumbling and the stumbling. And maybe you mispronounce somebody's name and you're thinking, oh, my God, I've mispronounced somebody's name. They're going to forget that within 20 minutes. So their memory is so bad. They forget all of the fluff. I think it's kind of interesting.

54:06Amelia Sordell: I read something earlier today that said within three generations, no one even will remember your name. so why would you allow the fear of people's judgment and looking at you and thinking you're doing the wrong thing stop you from doing the things that you want to do because they're not going to remember it anyway yeah so everyone's dying we're all ending they're all getting off this this ride in the same way so just go for it and it's a very cliche thing to do but i believe in life you get given these big red button moments i call them and my big bed one of my first big red button moments was when covid happened and i had the opportunity to start my own business right i I could either stay in the job that I wasn't really enjoying or I could just smash that big red button and quit my job with no savings, no nothing.

54:45Amelia Sordell: And we'll do the following week and just hope for the best. Right. We all get these moments where we can either choose the life we've already got. And that is a choice. Or we can choose to blow the whole thing up and do something different. And sometimes we, you know, don't take them and that's OK. Maybe you're not ready yet. But those buttons will keep presenting themselves to you until you push it. and for me like my mo this year is like how many red buttons can we push how many do not press can we like go for because it's on the other side of blowing up everything that you get the most incredible it's like you level up it's i think life's a video game right every time you press that big red button and you blow up what you've already got you're then into that next level and the more you can do that i think the more you the more you kind of succeed and get to where you want

55:29Ben Hanlin: to go one thing i didn't ask you about is i do when it comes to ideas and projects you're clearly a busy person you there's a lot going on inside your head you're like we could do this we do this how do you structure what ideas and projects you're going to do next or focus on and what you're going to just pause and let that idea just drift away do you know what's super interesting

55:47Amelia Sordell: so i am i am as you said i think if you're a creative person inherently and you're slightly neuro spicy you are always you're a spicy yeah you've always got ideas like you see a bin and you're like i could design that better like here's the business plan yeah that's like literally my brain is constantly in that i'd be like oh imagine if we could like design this like this it would be so much better like i there i've got i could be a billionaire with how many ideas i've had for stuff like deliveroo for example i'm pretty sure we all had that idea five years before delivery came out but none of us could be asked to execute it someone did they're now a billionaire right yeah we all have million dollar ideas but we don't execute them and last year for me was a very big lesson because i've always been someone who's like oh what about this what about this what about this and last year we did a lot of it like we tested a lot of stuff and a couple of kind of positives that came out of it is we learned what our positioning was we learned really intimately who our audience was we learned like maybe what the next stage in the business in my career is like we learned where everyone fits in like it was a great year because we just sprayed and prayed and figured it out because we executed pretty much for 70 of all the ideas we had but the other side of that like you can't just have a thousand ideas and maybe put like a penny into all of them you have to kind of pick a few and just go balls to the walls on them because otherwise you're never going to get anywhere it's like if you're a sports person you were doing football ping pong tennis paddle like you you'd never be great at one because you're spending too much time training for all of them um so for me now and the big lesson for me going into this year is like okay so where where really are we going right what is the number one thing we want to be and for me i I want to build a podcast that is representative of the modern woman, right?

57:25Amelia Sordell: That's my numero uno. Everything underneath that is whatever. And then for the rest of the year, there's only two or three initiatives we're focusing on. Everything is under that. And that's the priority. And I've given the remit to the team. I'm like, any other ideas are not to do with those three things. You just smile and nod.

57:42Ben Hanlin: Yeah, totally, totally agree. Amelia, we've come to the end of the podcast. We're on our final Ben's Fast Five. Are you ready for my fast five? Yes. All right. Question number one. Highlander question. If you could steal anyone's skills on this planet, who would it be?

57:59Amelia Sordell: If I could steal anyone's skills on this planet, I would probably steal Alex Homozi's ability to juggle content creation and scaling businesses. Because I think he is an amazing example of someone who, like you were talking about, I don't have the time. he has the time he's got a portfolio worth over 250 million dollars and still finds time to create content and i would love to learn the systems that that man has used to scale both yeah and he's doing

58:27Ben Hanlin: about 20 hours a week making content yeah exactly yeah yeah uh time capsule so the mythical uh powers that be are putting one of your pieces of work it could be a project it could be a piece of content be anything you want one thing you've done into a time capsule to live forever everything else will be incinerated yeah what one thing are we keeping my lives probably i have a weekly show

58:49Amelia Sordell: called the branded show um and it's as of two weeks time is going to become a full-time podcast which is exciting but it's a live show it's shot like a tv show and in there we i go through my rant of the week very personal i go through trend or trash so the things that are happening in business in the world that i think are trend or trash and then we have one business owner come on every single week basically telling me some things that they need some help with and then we workshop it together and that doesn't get that many views for me like we have maybe two to three hundred people live come which is amazing but the impact that that show has on individuals that do come is insane like every time we do that show we get emails messages screenshots social posts like people saying this has changed my life so i would keep that and where can we find that um if you go to ameliasordell.com forward slash live you can come and join us on the next one all right i will

59:38Ben Hanlin: do it i've not seen that i've not been on one right we don't promote it enough there you go um right uh culture vulture what one book film tv song music anything you've seen recently that

59:49Amelia Sordell: you've loved um god i am a real housewives franchise like obsessed which ones all of them i i use my downtime to find out what's happening and my favorite housewives are probably heather gay like she is an icon um and i just love it i just love watching rich women shout at each other

1:00:09Ben Hanlin: and it's and it's switch your brain off it's like fast food it just it gives you what it needs to

1:00:13Amelia Sordell: give you but also the story arcs just brilliant like this one's leaking that to the press and that one smacked that one with the handbag i just love it like what's not to love okay i mean i've

1:00:21Ben Hanlin: got no idea like what you're referencing but i will take that as great it's uh fine uh magic wand i'm gonna hand you my magic wand oh that's a bit forward behave and the the power is with you now you can make anything vanish from the world we can say the world of social media if you like want anything you want just to make the world a bit of a better place what do you make it vanish i would make uh polarity vanish so people seeing your opinion and saying you're wrong

1:00:49Amelia Sordell: okay i went to school where we did debate we we learned how to have arguments we learned how to bring evidence we also learn to respect other people's opinions when you didn't even just agree with them right so i would make that disappear because social media unfortunately and fortunately algorithmically is built to give you more of what you engage with so everyone believes that their opinion is fact so when they see someone who might be challenging their facts they believe that they are right and that person is wrong and i think that is actually fundamentally everyone talks about the world is rubbish and blah blah that's the only thing that we need to change because if you got rid of that then we'd be tolerant of political views sexual orientation like career decision like we wouldn't you wouldn't care as much as we all care there's a big difference between you having an opinion and having a fact and i think the ability to respect other people's opinions is fundamentally what we need more of great perfect answer and final question

1:01:43Ben Hanlin: what is the trick to i'll be specific on this one so because we get an interesting answer what is the trick to building a personal brand today um the trick to building a personal brand is understanding exactly why you're trying to do it knowing exactly who you need to attract to make

1:02:01Amelia Sordell: that goal happen and then creating content for that person to fall in love with you and want to buy from you and that's it thank you very much been a lovely chat thanks for having me cheers

1:02:12Ben Hanlin: so that was amelia sodell and we had this conversation about a week or so ago and what What she said has been percolating with me. And I've definitely got some key takeaways that I wanted to share. So for me, things that stood out from that episode was the way she batches her content two days a week. Now, I do that, but I don't do it to that extent. And she's committing to putting that as a huge priority. Now, that's not going to work for everyone because as she says, she is a content creator. That's her prime job. But the fact that she's willing to put two days aside to do that. And then I've heard Alex Homozi, who's running 100 million odd dollar company, puts 20 hours a week aside for social media.

1:02:54Ben Hanlin: And it makes me think, do you know what? How much am I going to ring fence of my time to prioritize the social media? I thought that was really interesting. Real simple tip, and I've done it already. I've seen the results is commenting on LinkedIn posts. I was going for more comments, probably with less substance, whereas actually I've started doing one or two meaningful comments a day. and I've noticed really good engagement. I did a comment the other day and it got 800 impressions, which for a comment is pretty good. So I thought that was interesting, changed the way I'm commenting. Another big thing was overthinking.

1:03:27Ben Hanlin: The fact to hear her, who's a content creator, the big audience, she has a thought, she picks up her phone and she goes and just does it. That is thought to execution so short and that is something I'm taking away from that. I'm like, how do I do that? How do I come up with a thought and execute straight away for a social media piece of video? I'm going to start thinking and executing that. And then I suppose the other big thing really is for content ideas, leaning into your failures, which 99.9 % of people do not want to share. And she's like, that is where the magic is. That's where the real human engagement is and connection is when you show the side that normally you keep to one side.

1:04:13Ben Hanlin: there we go so that is my I'm sorry you probably can hear my daughter has walked into the room Delilah hello she needs to get paper wow that was worth stopping the podcast for that is the world okay shush now please go away she's could she go and get a job already this is the world I'm in I've got to wrap things up because children are around enjoy the rest of your week we drop an episode every Friday. This has been What's the Trick with Aminia Sordell.