Building Your Personal Brand

Blair has an aversion to the topic of personal branding, so David offers examples of why, when, and how the personal brands he’s seen principals develop can be either helpful or harmful for their firms.

Links

“Launch Your Career as a Podcast Guest” by David C. Baker

Episode 1 of Dexter Guff is Smarter Than You: “You Don’t Exist Without a Personal Brand”

The Visible Expert® by Hinge Marketing

“Personal Branding for Creative Professionals” course by Dorie Clark

Transcript

BLAIR ENNS: David, I understand that today we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, and that's personal branding.

DAVID C. BAKER: Well, why is it one of your favorite topics? Because you like to be front and center in all the spotlights or what?

BLAIR: That was me being facetious.

DAVID: Oh, okay.

BLAIR: I have this aversion to the topic of personal branding and I understand it's just me. I understand this is a real thing and it deserves to be a real thing. I think I mentioned this previously on an earlier episode. I was at an event mixing with people afterwards and started a conversation with a woman and I said, "What do you do?" And she said, "I do personal branding," and I just had a physical reaction and I had to kind of take inventory of myself and what I was experiencing and it led to a slightly awkward conversation that we got through because I confessed to her that I have a problem with this term. What is my problem with personal branding?

DAVID: Yeah. Really, I'm honestly interested. Is it because you've tried and failed at it or ...

BLAIR: Well, in preparation for this, I went back and listened to episode one of season one of one of yours and my favorite podcasts, and that is Dexter Guff Is Smarter Than You. And episode one is called You Don't Exist Without A Personal Brand, so his first guest is Steve Jobs. Not that Steve Jobs, but another guy named Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs, who's written a book called My Brand Is Bigger Than Your Brand, a 22-page book, drops on Dex Guff the four pillars of personal branding. Number one, manufacturer authenticity. Number two, create envy. Number three, flaunt success and number four become a know-it-all. Now with that set up, talk to me about why we are talking about personal branding here on Two Bobs.

DAVID: Yeah, I really appreciate all the support you've offered for this topic today. This is going to be so easy now. I was just on the Dexter Guff podcast where I had to play this straight guy as a consultant and oh my goodness, I was laughing so hard. In fact, we had to do a retake for part of it because there was an audio drop for the studio in LA where the recording was being done. And so we had to start the thing over again and we were having so much fun that the producer said, "Okay guys, okay, stop it. We don't need any more. You're having too much fun." But anyway, so what am I supposed to say after that kind of an introduction?

BLAIR: So why are we talking about personal branding and why now? It's been around for a while. Why is this something you feel we should be talking about now?

DAVID: Well, I think the world around us is a little bit more receptive to it. In fact, in some ways the world actually will pay more appropriate attention to personal branding. And I'm not advocating anything sleazy or nasty. I want to manufacture authenticity.

BLAIR: Of course.

DAVID: Right. But the world around us has said we don't trust institutions like we used to. And that's just a fact. We don't trust institutions. We do trust to some extent, individual people. And so we have to humanize to some degree the firms that we're running because people want more authenticity. They want the real story. That's part of why that's happening. Another reason, and there's lots of little reasons, another is just the rise of what's called executive eminence, which is a terrible word, right? It's a terrible phrase. Deloitte coined that. There are actually entire graduate programs on executive eminence. You can look those up ,and it just brings to the surface this expectation that leaders who are running, not just firms like those that are listening to us, but other professional services firms as well. It brings to the surfaces expectation that you are required to be a part of business development all the time. So in some ways having a personal brand can facilitate that.

DAVID: Most of the new business stuff that you and I talk about a lot is really about creating a brand for the firm itself, but there is some element that has to be woven in there in some cases of a personal brand. Nobody's going to invite a firm to be on the Today Show or to speak at a conference or whatever. It's going to be a person. A firm can't write a book. So it's not right for everybody for sure. But some of our listeners are already doing this or are at the cusp of wanting to do this and want to just think a little bit more about it. So it seemed like a topic worth covering anyway.

BLAIR: Do you think it would be appropriate that when you and I speak from now on, you refer to me as your eminence? What is executive eminence? I mean, part of me thinks, Oh, executive eminence. That sounds really cool. And then two seconds later you think this is the most highfalutin, bullshitty term I've ever heard. It makes personal branding sound good. What is it?

DAVID: Well, it's just about creating a more notable visible profile for individual executives, and it really is a crime to have named it that. But that's all it is. It's just simply creating a higher level prominence for specific individuals at firms. We know who the CEO is of a lot of fortune 100 companies and we know them by name and we associate something about that person with that company. And so I think through the backdoor PR people especially realized that unless we pay attention to the individual's brand and what people think of that individual, we're never going to do an effective job of positioning this company well too. So there's all kinds of little things that have come for ... I'm not necessarily super in favor of it except in a few instances, but we have to just recognize that we operate in a world where there's going to be this overlap between a company and the person who's running the company. And that's where personal branding can be useful.

BLAIR: That makes a lot of sense. And I can envision scenarios where it makes more sense to kind of invest in this idea of a personal brand and I can also envision some scenarios where you're asking for trouble. Let's get into both of those. Yeah. Of those listening, who do you think it makes the most sense to pay closest attention and maybe apply this thinking to their situation?

DAVID: Well, leading that list for me would be the principal of a small firm who is comfortable with what comes with the requirements that come with personal branding. So that seems like kind of a no-brainer. So you have a small, it's probably going to tend to be more of an advisory firm as opposed to an implementation firm, and this person is comfortable with what that requires, whether it's writing or speaking or just one or the other. It could be both I guess. And you're not leaving a lot of other people out by creating this personal brand. And the other people at the firm aren't worried about one person having more notoriety than other people. That'd be the first obvious one to me.

BLAIR: So I'm imagining somebody starting out their firm in the early days, there's not much distinction, if any, between their personal brand and the brand of the firm that they want to create. So I'm imagining, let's just speed up time here. Somebody launches a firm and endeavors to build their personal brand while building the brand of the firm and maybe they see them as kind of similar, as essentially the same thing. But as the firm grows and more people are added, I would imagine there becomes this need to separate the two brands and as the principal ages and starts to think about selling, doesn't the personal brand become a problem as too much of the equity is tied up in the individual rather than the firm?

DAVID: Well, yes, unless it's a big firm and whoever's buying this place realizes if this is one person out of a hundred, and during the earn-out period does automatically assumes that we're going to cast this principal's role during the earn-out as still being out there in the public and raising awareness of now the bigger mothership that bought the firm. So in that case it isn't a problem. It can be a problem though for sure. If so much of the business is tied up to one person, then you know what happens when that person's branding sort of fades or goes in a different direction? It also is difficult to attract other key people to the firm who are almost always operating in the shadow of this person who's more well known for sure, so it's not an automatic great solution for things. It's just an option to think about.

BLAIR: I could see if a principal of a firm, let's say a partner or one of the principals in the firm has a large personal brand and it comes time to sell either the company or their shares, I would imagine there would have to be some sort of discount built into the multiple because of so much equity tied up in that individual, and I think you kind of alluded to that in saying in the earn-out period, one of the goals would be to essentially transfer that equity from the personal brand to the firm, which implies that the bigger your personal brand, you tell me if I'm getting this wrong, the bigger your personal brand on exit. If you're trying to sell or sell your shares, it becomes less likely that you're going to be able to leave immediately. Right. The requirement to earn out is going to be there over time as you transfer that equity from the individual to the firm.

DAVID: Yes, absolutely true. Unless you're from above say 80 a hundred people, then it doesn't really matter all that much. That's not really why they bought you. That's probably why they heard about you but not why they bought you, but yeah, for sure. The bigger your personal brand, the more important, the more frequently the buyer is going to transfer some of their risk so that you don't get all your money unless you stay around and keep blowing that trumpet for them over the next two to three years typically.

BLAIR: Okay. When else does it make sense to consider elevating the personal brand?

DAVID: I've seen it work really well in firms, whether big or small, where there are multiple partners and people settle into a comfortable role. One of the might settle into being sort of the managing partner who stays back at the office and manages the firm on a day to day basis. And somebody else may be really bad at that and it's in their firm's best interest that they be out on the streets, sort of talking all the time, drawing attention to the firm. And I don't see resentment building over that. People just realize, listen, I wouldn't want to be the managing partner and the managing partner saying, goodness I would not want to be doing what that person does. I wouldn't want to be on the road. I wouldn't want to be in front of people. So that can work really well. And ideally, as we've talked many times the best partnerships are built around the idea that the roles are very different for each principal. So we just recognized that one of the principles is much better at that. So that would make a lot of sense in that case.

BLAIR: And in the broader professional firm arena where there are multiple partners, you typically have the rainmaker partner and often an element of that rainmaking is elevated personal profile or personal brand. Okay. So personal branding makes sense or seems to make sense in small firms where it's largely about just one person anyway. And in really large firms have multiple partners where it's logical for one to focus. Where else?

DAVID: Well, I think this is one of the other things that's changed in the world around us and that's that you don't see people staying in the field for 30 years like they used to. So they're looking for something to do next and most of the time that next thing emerges from something they have been doing. And so there's a little bit of carryover, you know, they'll dump 80% of what they'd been doing and then they'll build on 20% of what they'd been doing. And so they recognize that there's going to be another business life after this firm. To ease that transition, I'm going to build a personal brand and there's nothing about that that can hurt me. It'll help me get a better job. That'll help me find work with another big firm. It'll help me teach. Wherever you're headed, and I've seen some really strange things where people have moved to another field, wherever I'm headed, anything I do now will help. You see people who are even laid off now who are looking for work and they write an ebook because they have the time and they figured it'll help them in their job search. It's just part of what it takes to sort of get noticed in the world and because people are changing careers more often, it makes more sense to have one eye on how to build their personal brand beyond their current corporate role at whatever firm they are.

BLAIR: If you put your agency principal hat on and you imagine you are hiring for an important position and you're reviewing candidates and you're looking at people's profiles on LinkedIn, I can imagine where a strong personal brand would be, A, be impressive, but B also be the opposite of that and maybe perhaps dissuade you from hiring somebody with too strong a personal brand. Do you know what I mean?

DAVID: I do. Exactly. Yeah. And I, I've seen examples of both of those. I've got multiple clients where both of those cases are true. So a client who has an employee who's a really respected, great team member who's written two books and the company supported that effort and that employee has never tried to use that as leverage against the firm. It's helped the firm, it's helped this author. He's done a great job on both fronts. And then I've also seen cases where it's blown up in your faces. So you see somebody who comes to you with a personal brand and the agency decides, oh, we're going to start a podcast. Oh, well Lisa had her own podcast. Maybe she should be the host, and Lisa does this and spends way too much time on the podcast and has all these fantastic guests. And then, I don't know, 15 months later, this is all hypothetical.

DAVID: I'm not thinking of a specific case, although some of the specifics I've seen, but 15 months later you look around and say, you know what? We're not really getting any benefit from this, but we do see Lisa's name getting mentioned a lot, and then Lisa begins to use this as leverage ain pay negotiations and so on. And then Lisa leaves at some point, and then what happens to the podcast? So you can see both sides of this for sure. I don't think it's a slam dunk to think of personal branding for employees, but I also don't think we should police that. People really need to be able to pursue that on their own if that's what they'd like to do. But whether it's a benefit to the business, I think is not black and white. It can go either way.

BLAIR: What about building a personal brand around something, characteristics, interests, values, et cetera, that don't necessarily tie to work? Is there any value in that? Just before we went live, we were talking about your dog. You were just at the vet, and I know you're an animal owner and you've had multiple dogs and you have all kinds of hobbies and interests in your life. Let's unpack the David Baker personal brand.

DAVID: Yeah, right. With a bad puppy right now.

BLAIR: I can think of just off the top of my head, lots of examples of people building ... there's a guy I know who's, prominent position in the agency world, and he's got a wine blog. And I can think of many examples like that. A, it's a hobby, but B, it's part of the personal brand. Yeah. I'm just saying I observed this, I'm just throwing it out there. Do you have a point of view on this?

DAVID: I think it's great. The only thing that gives me pause would be if it's political in nature, I think that could really backfire, but all this other, I think it's great. I think we want employees who are well-rounded. We want to sort of spread the tentacles of influence out there. I would encourage that. Yeah, I think that's fantastic and you see that everywhere. In fact, I think principals are really encouraging that because they're looking to impact their world, not just through the work that they're doing, but through the impact that individual employees can have as well. And I see more enlightened principals who are supporting those efforts, even if it's just giving them plenty of time during work to do the right things and sometimes even supporting it financially. But yeah, I think it's a good thing generally. Although I would probably stay away from political involvement.

BLAIR: As you're talking about all of this and politics, I'm thinking of politics because politics are tribal, but other things are tribal as well and I'm thinking of my own personal example of, I'm an avid supporter of the Liverpool Football Club, champions of Europe for the sixth time. But I almost never say ... I don't tweet stuff about Liverpool unless I just can't stand it. Something very rare. I don't talk about it publicly, although I'm doing it now. And the reason I don't is in the UK, especially among older generations, football as we would call soccer is very tribal. And I remember some conversations that I've found myself in, in Manchester and Liverpool. I don't want to alienate those Manchester United supporters. And I don't have this tribal ... because there's this strong tribalism, especially when you go back generations. So I often think, you know, I'd love to be able to tweet about this. I'd love to be able to talk about it. Should it be part of my personal brand, I've got a photo of Kenny Dalglish behind me. I've got that This Is Anfield sign in my house that I touch every morning as I walk by it. It's mounted in my stairwell.

BLAIR: It's actually got quite a big part of my non-working life. And I never talk about it because I don't know that that should be part of the personal brand because it's a little bit tribal. Am I doing the right thing or the wrong thing? If I open up more about myself personally, am I building some sort of advantage am I building a deeper connection? That's one question. On the other side, do I risk alienating people if they open up those kinds of personal aspects?

DAVID: I thought about stepping in and stopping you, but I thought, no, this is, this is great. He is hanging himself in front of the entire world as a Man City fan. Well, I don't think that's going to be a problem. In any case, every place I go, I make fun of their NFL team to them. It's just part of the ... so I don't know.

BLAIR: I don't think the NFL is as tribal as European football.

DAVID: Oh, it's not for sure.

BLAIR: Yeah. Okay. So I'm not getting very good advice from you, but let's move on on the list here.

DAVID: What's new?

BLAIR: I do appreciate it. I have a dragged you too many pubs around the world to watch Liverpool Football Club games and I appreciate that you always come and seem to enjoy the game. Okay, so moving on from Liverpool, European champions for the sixth time. Yeah. I'm never coming up again. I've just lost 8% of our global listenership.

DAVID: Yeah.

BLAIR: You've got a category of kind of natural outlets of personal branding. What do you mean by that? And then give us some examples.

DAVID: Yeah, so let's say somebody decides they want to do more of this or they just want to gut check about whether what they are doing makes sense. For me, I think, well, my opinion for other people is that writing needs to be a part of it. Even if it's not in a book, just writing wherever it lands somewhere. But after that, it can move in all kinds of different directions. You could have a podcast for your firm and more and more of our clients are doing that. You could decide to launch your career as a podcast guest. I've written a 5,500 word article on exactly how to do that. All the equipment, which of the five firms you might hire to represent you? It's like six, 700 bucks a month.

BLAIR: How you can hire Marcus to be your producer,

DAVID: Right. Yup. And a lot of our clients have done that. You might have a book in you, you might decide to do that. You might have a really active speaking career. I'm in a Facebook group of 450 speakers and they take it very, very seriously. These folks do it professionally. That's what they do for a living. That's all they do for a living. So those would be the outlets if you want to create a personal brand. There are all kinds of other really great lead gen activities that your firm could do that have nothing to do with personal branding. Just because I don't want people to leave this podcast thinking that, oh, I need to get to work and do that because I don't think that's the case at all.

DAVID: You could have your own event, you could have an annual research report, you could have really a great active email marketing campaign, none of which require personal branding. So it's just more of a choice. It's more of an outlet if that strikes you as something that makes sense for you. You just have this itch to do that or you feel like your firm is at this place where maybe you're thinking about a transition and a few years down the road and you think, ah, I need to start building my personal brand because that will live on even after the firm isn't there. Yeah, so speaking podcast, both sides of the mic, that kind of thing.

BLAIR: I'm still really uncomfortable with this topic and, as I often use this to get free consulting advice from you, I'm going to continue to talk about my business here because last week I looked at the next iteration of the Win Without Pitching website and it's got me all over it. It's Blair Blair Blair. This is a scaled-up company where I've got an incredible coaching team and I really want it to be less about me. I don't do coaching anymore. I still do training. And with the marketing team they pushed back and said, "No, we've done the research. We talked to all of these people. You're essentially the bait, you're what draws people in." And so when I look at the homepage of the new website, it's like there's so much to me, it makes me sick and then their attitude is, "No. Once you get past the home page, it's less about you. Blair starts to disappear."

BLAIR: This is a small business. I'm the person who does this podcast with you and I've written a couple of books but I still even in a small business like Win Without Pitching, that line between should the brand be the company or should it be personal? It's just I'm really uncomfortable with it. I understand some of the reasons behind it. Give me some magic words, some guidelines, some magic wisdom, your eminence that can help me understand when I should ratchet up my personal brand and when I should ratchet it down and focus on the company brand.

DAVID: Yeah. My answer for that is I think the firm that's working with you has apparently discovered the same thing that I would say and that's that your clients and prospective clients want to see you in that role. They want to work with somebody who is comfortable in that skin and is well-known. That's part of the win for them.

BLAIR: They just don't know any better yet.

DAVID: But there are people who are really good at personal branding who turn out to be assholes. We're not talking about that. We're talking about people who are good at personal branding, who when you meet them and speak with them, they're humble and funny and irreverent like you are. I went through this change about a year and a half ago. I was working with the newfangled folks and wanted to step away from the company brand. It was such a joke. Anyway, it was just me and it felt like I was using the royal we everywhere and I'm still uncomfortable with the front page of my website, which is me sitting on a stupid stool. Right, but why do I run away from that? I think your clients want you to be in that role and you'll just have to accept it.

BLAIR: So I'm thinking of your website because as you point out, you used to trade on the business name Recourses and it was recourses.com. Now it's just David C. Baker, davidcbaker.com. I think in your case, that makes sense. But it also, when you made that shift, it told me that you have no intention of ever selling your business. Correct?

DAVID: Right.

BLAIR: Okay. And if you were reserving the right to sell it ... now you said right a little tentatively there. Are there some plans that you want to share with the audience?

DAVID: Well, I was going to sell it, but then you told me that I could never sell it. So I said, oh shoot, that changes all my plans.

BLAIR: Yeah, so I think in your case as a solopreneur, it makes sense where you're essentially kind of, I wouldn't say hiding, but putting up this facade of ... even facade isn't, I don't mean this disrespectfully as it sounds, but you're putting forward this image of Recourses and this kind of larger entity. It really is just you. Everybody who has gotten some exposure to you knows it's just you and you've just said, okay, it's just me, and now the personal ... I love that photo of you on your website. I think you've manufactured authenticity quite well. So that's pillar number one of personal branding. I look at it and I think it's a great photo of you. It's very genuine. It's very authentic. So I think it's perfectly appropriate in your situation. I have a few staff and growing and I question whether or not I should do that.

DAVID: What does Shannon think of this?

BLAIR: Shannon's our director of coaching and a member of our executive team. I think she's all for it. I think she understands it, but the irony is people are perhaps attracted to the business through getting exposure to me and then they very quickly realize that her and her coaching team are far better at this than I am.

BLAIR: So I think she's okay with it. Now, enough about you and me. I'm thinking of other examples. I was looking at a website yesterday, somebody who serves the creative firms spaces well, got a pretty decent looking business from the outside. I don't know the details on the inside, but the personal branding element really kind of set me off. I have this line, it's like I'm never going to Instagram my life for gain. I'm not on Instagram. You know what I mean by that?

DAVID: Yeah. And the world breathes a sigh of relief to hear you promise that that's great.

BLAIR: But I've had so many branding people say ... they come to Kaslo and go, "Whoa, this is incredible. You should show off your life, like you in a kayak. You ... " all of this stuff. And I think there's something in the pit of my stomach that just turns.

BLAIR: I know a guy you've met him as well. He runs a very successful business in another part of the world. And he did a complete pivot to going from enterprise sales, selling to enterprises to essentially selling to individuals. And he said, "I'm going to build this personal brand that's really about me. Look at the life I lead. You can have my life if you just kind of follow my formula." And I was having that knot in my stomach. He acknowledged it, and I won't say his name here, but he, he said, yeah, the whole brand is love his name, hate his name, and I said, okay, at least he acknowledges what he's doing. That does not feel like showing off your authentically manufactured life. Look how great my life is. That just does not feel real. It just makes me sick.

DAVID: Yeah. I should have found somebody else to interview me on this topic obviously, but don't you think people want to ... they want to go to dinner with you. What do they want to talk about at dinner? They want to know a little bit about your personal life. It just gives them a bigger context. I'm not talking about manufacturing anything. I'm just talking about presenting yourself as a person and being a little bit more public about it because that's what consumers are more comfortable with now. They don't trust companies, they trust people and so part of deciding to work with a firm like ours, I don't mean a publicly traded firm, I mean a firm like ours, is to know something about the people. And I don't know, what's the percentage of our listeners who should be more intentional about personal branding? So get a number in your head and let's compare. I'm going to say about 20% of them.

BLAIR: Yeah, I had 15, but again, there's my bias against and maybe it should be higher as I think through it. If I'm coming to terms with the reasons why this topic is uncomfortable for me, it's this idea of kind of showing off success, flaunting success. The third pillar of personal branding according to Steve Jobs, and I think that's why I'm not on Instagram. To me it's all so fake. I tweeted a quote this morning from the day of this recording, we're recording this on July 11th from the Dexter Gaff podcast that dropped today. "Instagram is the world's largest database for authenticity," and I think that line, which is so funny because if you haven't discerned already, this is a parody podcast. It's hilarious. That line just captures everything that I feel is wrong about personal branding and showing off your personal life.

BLAIR: For people like you and I who sell kind of ideas and advice and our clients are in the ideas and advice business too, the notion of, look at my life, you can have that life too, just drives me bat shit crazy. I want to go running in the other direction as soon as I get some exposure to, look at how great my life is. So on one hand that's what I'm repulsed by. On the other hand, you asked me, I go to dinner with a client, what do they want to know about? And I'm thinking, well what do I want to talk about with my client? I don't want to talk about their business, right? You always find something interesting about somebody, about their personal life and at dinner you want to have that conversation about their personal interests. So I think it's a fine line between bubbling up those genuine, legitimate things that make you somebody personally interesting and compelling and communicating those things so that you can get an essence of the person without bragging, without showing off, without always putting the best face forward.

DAVID: Right. You can make fun of yourself, which is a part of that. Right? I say this phrase frequently and I say you need to be human, but just barely. And that's what I mean, it's putting a personal context on things and not an Instagram life. That's not what I'm talking about. So I was listening to Tyler Cohen the other day, an economist, I think you know of him for sure. You may have heard of some of his podcasts. Anyway, I was listening and he made a comment during the interview about how much he loves wine and how much he loves discovering little unknown restaurants in other countries. Oh, that's interesting. But that's not personal branding. To me, that's just him being an authentic human that helps me put something in context. But Tyler Cohen or Russ Roberts, another economist, they do have personal brands and if we recognize that people do have personal brands and let's pay attention to being a little bit more intentional about them.

BLAIR: Okay.

DAVID: Unconvinced, I can tell.

BLAIR: I feel like I'm making progress in this therapy and I thank you very much for that. The check's in the mail. Are there any special cases that you want to talk about or have we already talked about the employee who wants to build a personal brand? Should the principal support this or even pay for it?

DAVID: Yeah, that's a tough one. I think you have to just rely on your instincts. Is this a good person? Will it have some either business benefit or will it help them in their life, even if it has no personal benefit? At least, I don't know how I could craft specific guidelines for this. It's just think carefully about what's going to happen when you stop it, or when you start those kinds of things, put boundaries around them or even some time guidelines. So yeah, let's do that. Let's do it for six months or let's do it for two years or something so that you don't end up having a really awkward situation down the road. So I think it's not an automatic slam dunk when you're talking about a key employee as opposed to a principal.

BLAIR: Gotcha. All right. If people want to explore this in more detail, I suppose we can post some links in the show notes. There's definitely, I would recommend you listen to episode one, season one of Dexter Guff Is Smarter Than You, and the topic of that one is you don't exist without a personal brand and the guest is Steve Jobs, not that Steve Jobs. Any other resources you would point people to?

DAVID: Yeah, probably a client of mine. Hinge Marketing has developed a lot of research around the visible expert and how it helps a firm for those experts to be visible.

BLAIR: See that's a great label. The visible expert.

DAVID: Right. As opposed to executive eminence, which is the worst label in the world. And then Dorie Clark, D-O-R-I-E. dorieclark.com is really good at helping people who don't necessarily know how to do it. It's not really for advanced work in this space, but if you are more near the beginning of this, her course is really good on that. So dorieclark.com.

BLAIR: Okay, great. Well, I think I've made some progress on the subject of personal branding, so thank you for the free consulting David. We'll talk to you next time.

DAVID: Yep. Thanks Blair.