Episode Summary
Personal branding continues to be a big topic in 2022, and anyone aspiring to grow professionally should consider building a personal brand. But few companies see the value that personal branding could bring to their specific business.
Therefore, it is the job of marketing professionals, especially those who have already built an extensive community on channels, such as LinkedIn, to spread the word about personal branding and educate business owners about its importance.
In today’s episode of Rep Your Brand, we get to hear from an expert in sales and marketing—a person who has been in entrepreneurship for over two decades, Jorge Soto.
Jorge is a podcaster, the founder of Sotoventures Fund and Head of Content and Community at Reprise. In this episode, he shares his professional journey and encourages everyone to build their personal brand.
Guest Profile
- Name: Jorge Soto
- What he does: Jorge is a podcaster, the founder of Sotoventures Fund and the Head of Content and Community at Reprise.
- Company: Reprise
- Noteworthy: Jorge was an entrepreneur since he was a junior in college. As he says, he was always passionate about building or attempting to build web or technology companies.
Key Insights
- Companies should encourage employees to build a personal brand. We all agree that people want to work with people. It means that customers like to know who are the people behind the brand. That's how you build trust with prospects. And so, encouraging your employees to work on personal branding can greatly benefit the entire organization. ''The important thing is to remember why you're doing the personal branding stuff. How does it impact your company? How does it impact your career? And then, are you being authentic about it? I don't think that you can sustain it if it's not authentic.''
- Make the most out of digital channels. Social media has become crucial for expanding your customer base. However, not all platforms will meet your business needs. It is critical to determine where your targeted audience is and build your presence there. Also, you need to create a clear message. ''I think it's important to be able to understand, on a per-channel basis, what you want to communicate.''
- Don't overlook the importance of achieving a work-life balance. We’ve turned our lives into a chase—we chase money, roles, status—and neglect that we are (just) humans. Nothing is ever enough; we constantly think we can do more and test our physical, mental, and emotional boundaries. But, we feel overwhelmed at some point, and our body just screams: Stop! ''Burnout is real. It happened to me, and I was like, 'Whoa!' All that stress and anxiety and all this stuff that had built up over years of just working it all, it hits you. And so I think balance is more key these days than ever before.''
Episode Highlights
All Startups Can Leverage a Demo
”What is a demo? It’s an experience that allows a prospect or a potential customer to experience your product before making a decision. And so, I think any business can do that.
I always talk about my door-to-door sales days back when I was in grad school. In the summertime, I’d go in and sell books and CD-ROMs. […] I talk about this because […] we sold books, but I had a demo book. I used to sell these big encyclopedia things, and so obviously, I could not carry several volumes of those, door to door. So I handed them a book.
So, you can sort of think about how that’s an example of how I am able to, as a salesperson and as a marketer, leverage that even outside of just B2B, even outside of technology.”
How and Why Should B2B Companies Use Personal Branding?
”If you’re an employee at a company, you have to feature everyone within the organization, that’s my opinion. Even the SDRs and to the extent that if you have staff that was cleaning the floor, I would say they should post stuff.
So it just gives a different dimension and humanizes that brand. It starts to give you this window into the company that we never had before. Before, it was just logos and a website. In the last 30 years or so, being able to leverage the personal brands of the employees is huge.”
Instagram vs. Twitter vs. LinkedIn
”My Instagram page is less business; it’s sort of like personal branding. I do type myself as an entrepreneur or whatever, but it’s me expressing myself in a more artistic and spiritual way.
Twitter’s largely business for me; LinkedIn, largely business stuff. I will sprinkle in some personal stuff sometimes. I get away with some bold statements sometimes, some existential statements, things like that.
But, generally, the persona or the aspect of myself that I want to communicate on Twitter as a channel is different from my Instagram and my LinkedIn.”
A Piece of Advice for Anyone Looking to Build a Personal Brand
”Just do it. Don’t overthink it. It’s going to be great, or people don’t like it. Who cares? That’s one thing that I will stand behind: I never gave a shit if anybody cared; I don’t know if anyone still cares.
It was all about what I wanted to put out in the world. And if one person saw it and saw value, that’s awesome too, because I could then go back and say, ‘You know what, I’m putting out the stuff that I want to put out in the world, and I can stand behind that.’
So don’t overthink it, just go for it. Put together a plan, and it’s all gonna work out. And be consistent; it’s gonna take a while.”
