Personal Brand Matters

Watch the episode here:

• People will work you up before hiring you, buying for you
• Credibility and authority are good personal brand reasons
• What you put out there, it’s what you want them to see
• It’s not that difficult to make a mark for yourself
• Your media doesn’t need to be all about your business
• The more you put yourself out there, the better you’ll get
• There is no way you can anticipate the questions
• You don’t have to be prepared when you’re  yourself

What’s shakin’? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan today we’re going all in. I’m excited to talk about what’s been on my mind here because I’ve been looking around and, I just did, an event, an industry event in my industry, which is, uh, IT support cybersecurity managed service providers, right? Outsourced IT support. And I was looking around because there’s not many in my industry that actually put effort into a personal brand, you know, let, let alone even, a real brand on the business. There’s not a lot that even let put in any sort of effort whatsoever into a personal brand. And I want to talk about the importance of that today because it doesn’t matter if you’re a service-based organization, if you’re a, if you’re a product-based organization, if you’re a real estate agent, I mean real estate though. I mean, come on now, a real estate broker, it, it personal brand is like the whole freaking thing.

No joke. Because people are buying you. And I was talking about this at a different event from stage a little while back and I was talking about the importance of having this because there are these key elements and no matter where you want to go in business, no matter where you want to go, e even working for somebody else, right? Because, regardless of what you may think, you have a personal brand no matter what. I mean, if you’re looking, to change jobs or whatever, I guarantee you that most people are looking you up on social. I mean, you can pull up the articles, you can pull up any sort of study that you want that most managers now are looking you up on social media before they make the decision to hire you. You know, I know that happens here. Heck, e even with, uh, within reach out within my company, my cybersecurity company, we use a platform called Breezy, B R E E Z Y.

And Breezy automatically goes out and enriches the applications that come in, the resumes that come in with social media profile data. It just goes on and finds it. Yeah. So when you go into the applicant, I’ve seen this from in our HR department, when you go into the applicant right there, you know, cuz you, you don’t submit those when you submit the application and when you wanna work at reach out, you, you just see that from the backend. As soon as somebody applies Breezy automatically goes out and uses AI to find and enrich the data that’s been provided by that candidate, by the person applying for the job. And we see the social media profiles right there, wake up, it’s all public information and it’s always right there in front of anybody. And this goes exponentially when you have your own business when you’re an entrepreneur personal brand matters.

Well, regardless of whatever you’re doing on a business brand side, you need to invest something into your personal brand. Now, I don’t mean necessarily money because I mean there’s a lot of dollars that I put into my personal brand and look into where it’s got me, okay? Taking a company public, look at all the media that I do that is credibility right there. Credibility and authority is the reason why I put so much into my personal brand. Now I’m playing in the eight and nine-figure realm with what I’m doing and scaling and everything else. And you know, putting myself out there. I’m not saying you have to do that, but you have to have some kind of credibility, some kind of authority that’s out there on the internet. You have to be googleable, you have to be findable because what you put out there is what you want people to see, not what people are able to find.

Does that make sense? I hope so. Because what you wanna put out there, if you Google Rick Jordan and you can go ahead, you’ll see a lot of things on the front page. Now I’m trying to fix the Google panel. I’ve been saying this for a while. It’s funny. It says I’m 65, we gotta figure out how to fix my age because really I’m not, I’m 43 as of this show anyways. And there’s so much other stuff that’s on there. But I tell you the biggest thing that helped me do that from SEO from a personal brand is actually doing all the media appearances that I’ve done. Guesting on podcasts, not even necessarily having this one, but it sure helps to put just flooding the internet with content guesting on podcasts, but even more so showing up on tv, doing all the major media that I do because they like to backlink those articles.

They’ll actually take my appearances, pop ’em on an article on their site, which is a high-traffic site, and then it just backlinks right? To me, this is how I’m findable by everybody and why I take up pretty much the entire first page is there’s content, there are articles, there’s everything that constantly goes out there. Now, I didn’t start this way, you know, years ago when I first started going out with the personal brand, you know, I’m talking 2018 is when I actually did my first TV appearance, which I always joke about that it sucked. It was an Albuquerque, New Mexico, yeah, blah, blah, whatever. But that’s what started this I just started doing these things. Now, regardless of what you feel that you can invest right now, you don’t have to invest six figures, you don’t have to invest five figures, and you don’t even have to invest four figures into your personal brand to get started. All you have to do is have something out there that represents what you want people to see. It’s 100% a requirement these days in order to do business or to even just apply and get hired for the job that you want. Hands down.

Now when you do this, you can just start taking your phone. You know, I was at this event the other day that I was talking about where in my industry, and I’m like, how many of you actually do like anything on social whatsoever? And there weren’t a lot of hands that were up there and it blew my mind, right? Because in the IT industry, the people that use technology all the live long day for everything else are the ones that are not on any kind of social media whatsoever. It’s freaking hilarious to me. You know, so it’s not, it’s really not that difficult to start making a mark for yourself, which is what I started doing five years ago. I think I’ve got like a, you know, almost a decade head start, and most other people in my industry because of this. And it seems like not many people are catching on.

What if you were the first to catch on in your industry and started doing this? I mean, think about it, I don’t know what you do. What, what if you’re, what if you own a carpet cleaning business, right? Or an upholstery business, it’s a service-based business or some kind of delivery, whatever. You know, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing because write this down, okay? Who you are is way more important than what you actually do. Who you are is way more important than what you actually do. That’s what gives you the edge. Because people are going to look you up before they hire you. Whether that’s for the services that you’re providing, the products they’re buying from you, or the job that you’re trying to apply for, they’re going to look you up. Personal brand matters. You can start by just holding up your phone and just taking a video and saying, Hey, this is what I got for you today.

I was thinking about this. And it doesn’t have to be anything necessarily about your business. No joke. There are easy ways to start generating this content to build your personal brand. You can go onto a site, this is very applicable, applicable, and practical information. Did you like that? You know, sometimes I spin over my own words, but that’s okay. Applicable and practical information. You can go onto a site called matchmaker for podcasts. This is gold that I’m gonna give you right now. You can go on there, matchmaker for podcasts, and then you can start going on shows because the small shows are the ones that are gonna take you. No joke when you’re starting out, the small shows are the ones that are going to take you. You’re not gonna go out there, you’re not gonna get on the top 10, the top 100, even the small shows are the ones that are going to take you.

And in that process, you get footage. If you’re on Zoom a lot, record over Zoom or you know, some other like Streamy Yard or some other apps that are out there, you get that footage of you talking and it’s way easier for someone to ask you a question and you to answer than trying to come up with this content for your personal brand on your own. They will prompt you and then you’ll be able to just spit it out because you do know what, you know, you bring value with whatever business you’re doing right now with whatever industry you’re in. You bring value. This is the freaking goal. And then that content you can repurpose so you don’t have, this isn’t, and that’s free. That’s the thing that is 100% free. These small shows are looking for guests all the time for experts in the industry, in their industry, whatever industry it is, just to have a good conversation about something.

And the more you do it, the better and better and better and better and better that you get. If you do a 20-minute podcast as a guest on one of these shows, again, go to a matchmaker and put yourself out there, right? Get some good headshots or something first, okay? Cuz there, there’s a spot for a headshot on there from what I know. You know, go out there, do these small shows, get the video, you’ve got content, you can launch your personal brand in like three days. It’s as simple as that. Personal brand matters. And what’s even better about going at it at this point? Because what you’ll find is that if you just hold your phone up like this, you’ll tend to try to overthink these things. You’ll tend to try to like this character. And I’m gonna tell you this because I went through the same thing as soon as I, I thought that I had to like be this thing. It was a subconscious thing that I didn’t even realize is that as soon as the camera turned on, it was like I went into this different mode that wasn’t really me. Do you know? It’s what I thought people wanted from me.

And this was years ago, okay? But then I started realizing as I kept doing this, that you’ll probably go through the same thing, which is why I’m giving you a heads-up. It’s a lot easier if you’re going on these shows and people are asking you questions because there’s no way you can anticipate all the questions. No way. And please by all means, if they say, Hey, I’ll send you the questions ahead of time, just tell ’em not to. For real. Get outside of your comfort zone box, right? And be challenged at the moment to talk about things on the fly. You don’t have to be prepared when you’re yourself, your authentic self, and you actually talk about what you know. You don’t have to make things up when all you’re doing is talking about what you know. So when the camera turns on because if you’re just using your phone, you’re thinking, you know, all, all those, you know, you think that you’re supposed to be this influencer, right? And there’s this way that influencers come across on Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and you’re seeing them, you know? And it’s almost like a, it’s like, I need to be just like that. No, you don’t need to be just like that person. You need to be just like yourself. Because the more authentic you are, the more people will listen. Did you hear that? The more authentic you are, the more people will listen.

Personal brand matters and it’s easy to start. And it is absolutely essential to your success to have some kind of social proof, have some kind of credibility. That’s a third-party thing that’s out there on social. Or if you’re gonna do media like I do tv or what I gave you today was guesting on podcasts. A personal brand matters. That’s why people will do business with you because people buy, from people. And sales is simply a transference of trust. That is how you will just skyrocket this year in revenue, in income, by focusing on even just a little bit of attention. I gave you some easy ways today, super easy. There’s no excuse that you have right now. So if you’re looking for that, right, like a sign, take this as your signature. There’s no excuse for you. Personal brand matters. So now Go ALL IN.