What are you known for amongst audiences you’d like to influence?

At a time when there is an increasing blurring of lines between business brands and those who create, shape or promote them…

…Paying attention to how you’re perceived has never been more important.

In today’s interview, Eamonn O’Brien speaks with Niall Devitt, a Co Founder of TweakYour Biz.com (an international, business advice community and online publication) and, more recently, of social business consulting group, the Ahain Group about the slings, arrows and realities of cultivating and managing your personal brand.

The Rising Importance of Personal Brands and Why You Should Care

Listen in as we chat about:

• What personal brands are all about and who needs one
• What influences how your brand may be assessed by others
• Whether the scale of business you’re involved in matters
• The role your personal brand plays in boosting the level of trust others place in you
• Why the word ‘consistency’ needs to be uppermost in your mind.
• The importance of choosing where and how you’ll cultivate how you’re perceived
• How your attitude can make a world of difference to the results you achieve
• The biggest pitfalls you need to avoid
• And more.

Over to You

Please feel free to share any questions, comments or opinions you have about today’s podcast.

Interview Transcript

Eamonn O’Brien: I’m delighted today to be joined by a pal, Niall Devitt. And Niall, of course you are one of the co-founders of Tweak Your Biz, which is a really well-known online business community. And more recently now, you’re the co-founder of a social business group, the Ahain Group.

So, delighted to have you here.

Niall Devitt: Thank you Eamonn. Nice to be here.

Eamonn: And today, we’re going to talk about the rising, growing importance of having a personal brand. And you’re a man who knows a lot about these things. Kick off, what on earth is this personal brand thing, and who needs one?

Niall: Yeah, I suppose probably everyone needs one. So, just to go back to your introduction, I suppose two things that we know about personal brand is that it’s become more important than obviously that trend is increasing. As opposed to define what personal brand is, I suppose it’s the perception that the world around you has of yourself.

Specifically, it’s how you put your best foot forward. So, I think most people would be familiar with a CV, for instance. Back in the old days when you went for a new role, and within that CV you put your qualifications, your achievements, your experiences; all the things that you are good at, all your strengths, et cetera, et cetera.

As a personal branding is very much an ongoing process very much in that with the advent of online and some of the social media tools, they’ve given us the opportunity to consistently build upon our personal brand.

Eamonn: Absolutely. Now, having talked about building these things, a question people would ask is, “Does it matter if I’m in a small business, versus a medium business, versus a large business. Does everybody need to be focused on this?

Niall: Yeah. I would say in some respects it probably actually matters more for a small business, specifically a small business owner, because overall, in terms of their responsibilities, they’re going to contribute in quite a big way to the business. So, if they grow their personal brand, their business will probably grow in line with that.

That said, there are a number of examples of much, much bigger businesses where someone within the organization who had a very strong personal brand contributed to a quite large organization. Of the top of my head, I’m thinking of someone like Steve Jobs, for instance who had a pretty massive personal brand and was able to use that quite effectively.

Eamonn: Joined at the hip. Absolutely.

Niall: I suppose definitely for small business owners nowadays, it’s something that you need to be aware of and work upon. And I would also say that if you work for a larger business or corporation, I would still suggest it’s something that you need to be aware of and work on.

Eamonn: I know, I absolutely agree with you. Tell me, what role does your online, your offline brand have on the degree to which people will trust you today, do you think?

Niall: I think that, I suppose, online definitely plays a part. Particularly in Ireland, sometimes we do need to meet with people; we need to look them in the eye, as it were, before we form quite a strong opinion.

But one of the things that very often comes back to me when I’m speaking at an event, or I’m t a networking event or something like that, people will tell me that they have a perception of me from my online persona, and I often find that it’s interesting to see if I match up with how they thought I was. I have seen instances of people where I’ve had a perception based on their online personality, and actually in person they tend to be quite different. I suppose from a head point of view, that can be somewhat confusing.

So, I would say, yeah absolutely. Your online persona is very important and it plays a very big part nowadays in terms of your overall personal brand, but it’s probably as important that it aligns yourself with who you actually are, that it’s authentic in some way.

Eamonn: I like that because I think that you’re absolutely right, that you need to be authentic both online and offline. And you used a really important word there. The word “consistency” needs to be in the sentence. Why? Why is that so important?

Niall: Yeah, I think it’s really with anything that you’re trying to build, any aspect of business or any aspect of your life is – Rome wasn’t built in a day – so, if you’re trying to build your personal brand online, it’s going to take some time. It happens in small steps, usually, rather than big steps. So, it’s important to set aside some time weekly, daily and continue to do those things, I suppose, that will continue in a positive way to your personal brand over time.

And if you look at the graph, it’s exponential in the sense that it starts off quite slow and sometimes you feel that you’re not getting anywhere quickly. And then it picks up a little bit, a momentum. And then once you get momentum, it starts to pick up and pick up and then sooner or later, you’re recognized in some way or indeed you’re invited to speak at an event, or whatever it might be.

And again, even for me right now, I suppose I started off as a sales guy for temporary. So, if I’m asked to contribute an article to the National Press here, or say the National Press in the U.S and stuff like that, I still have a little bit of a smile because really I suppose it’s my online brand, or what I developed online, that has given me those opportunities. And probably way back, 10 years ago, I didn’t envision that was even possible if I was honest.

Eamonn: Absolutely. And you’ve experimented in lots of different places, and of course it’s evolved over time. What about making choices about where you’re creating your visibility? Do you have any thoughts or advice that you give people? Let’s talk about small businesses and making those choices.

Niall: I suppose – and again, it really depends on who you want to communicate with – and so on terms of making the decision of where I’m going to base myself, in terms of myself and my personal brand, typically speaking I will look to who is it that I would like to talk to and communicate with on our day on that particular platform. From my point of view, that’s the way that I look at it.

The other thing from an online tools point of view – and again this is my preference – I typically like to take one platform and learn it pretty well before I move onto the next one. I find that if you try to be all places and all things to all men it can get somewhat diluted in terms of that. The other thing is – and again, to realize that you probably have something interesting to say.

It might not be interesting to everyone, but the nature of the online environment and the nature of the world being a very big place, there are a portion of people out there that will find what you have to say interesting, and really you just need to find them. You don’t necessarily need to be able to talk to everyone about everything.

Eamonn: I like that idea, and I think more than that perhaps, by staying and being involved, you start and you build on the conversation, maybe.

Niall: And another thing that’s probably – certainly in my experience, but I think it holds true for most people – is that you can help other people within your network to build their brand and what usually happens is that they help to build your brand. So, typically, although you might be building your personal brand, you can do that very much in a collaborative type way.

Specifically in terms of my experience – because of Tweak Your Biz, that the website that you mentioned there is very much a community or a collaborative based – so it was my personal brand has come very much from helping other people build their personal brand. And that, if you like, was my focus and my personal brand was able to piggy-back off the back of that, if you like.

Eamonn: I like that, because you used the word “help,” and I think that’s vitally important talking about how you can really do something for a community where they will basically reflect back and you will enjoy the benefit of that. What are the most common deadly sins you see committed in terms of people not getting as much out of their personal brand, even if they’ve got a great story?

Niall: I suppose it’s very much a balance in terms of putting your best foot forward. In other words, you really want to put the best of you out there. And again, I don’t mean to stereotype in terms of Irish people – but I think sometimes that’s not something that comes naturally to us. It’s not in our psyche to – we see that sometimes as, “Who’s your man, saying he’s so great?” and so on and so forth.

So, there’s a little bit of an obstacle there that’s in-built and we need to get over that a little bit. So, that’s the first thing. The second thing, I would say is you can also fall into the trap quite easily of saying a little bit too much about yourself. So, there’s a fine balance there, and even though it might be online, what you figure out is that people are pretty bright. So, they’re able to smell the truth from the waffle pretty easily.

So, there’s a little bit of a balance there, as I say. Put the best of you forward, put your best foot forward, but do it in a way that’s realistic, authentic, and honest about yourself. I think if you get that balance right, that’s probably the best way to do it. We probably all know people who, as I say, go a little bit too far and sometimes they’re not taken seriously. And again, if it’s a professional personal brand, you probably want to be taken seriously.

Eamonn: You absolutely do. Listen, Niall that has been absolutely fantastic, so thank you indeed for coming in.

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