SPECIAL LIMITED SERIES: ===> HAVING A PERSONAL BRAND IS CRITICAL!🚽 <=== | BATHROOM Break #10 (COLLAB: The Marketing Millennials + Do This, Not That)

Welcome to a new special series called the Bathroom break. That extra 10 minutes you either have to listen to marketing tips or use the bathroom or both. But I don't recommend both. But that's your choice.

This collab is going to be super fun.

We have Daniel Murray from the Marketing Millennials and me, Jay Schwedelson from the do this, not that podcast and subjectline.com each episode in the series, we are going to go over quick tips about different marketing topics. And if you want to be in the bathroom, you fine, just don't tell us about it. Thanks for checking it out.

Welcome back to another episode of the Bathroom Break. I'm here with the king of personal brand, the king of subject lines, the king of having the best hair in the business. Nice, Jay Schwedelson.

And I'm Daniel Murray, the king of giving Jay Schweisen shit. So welcome back and today we're going to talk about how to grow your personal brand. And honestly, Jay is one of the best at doing this.

I've never seen someone who has such a good personal brand in so many different communities, spaces. Not only that he has it on LinkedIn, but you go to conferences, people know who he is. He's networking all the time.

I don't know how he does that with running an agency and running a podcast and running it, but he's networking all the time. He's personal brands all the way up. He knows how to do it. So he's one of the best to talk about this. So, Jay, you want to start off the first tip?

That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. I'm going to play that back for my entire family so they could, whatever. I mean, none of it's true, but that's cool. So, yeah, personal brand.

I almost wish I, I focus on my personal brand like, like a zillion years ago because the value of it is enormous. And I think as time goes on, as AI takes over the planet more and more and there's this generic tidal wave of garbage that's coming our way.

Having a personal brand and standing out is, I think, going to be a difference maker. Whether you're a B2B marketer, whether you're a consumer marketer, it doesn't matter. Your industry, it's going to matter.

And I think the number one thing as it relates to your personal brand is that you have an asset that you own, that you're not solely reliant on social media and your social media following to get your messages out there to get your content out there. So what do I mean by owning an asset?

I think that every single human being needs to either have a newsletter, an email newsletter they're sending out consistently, or to have a podcast that they are at least every week putting out episodes. Because your podcast audience is something that you own and your newsletter something that you own.

And all this social media algorithm stuff, you don't own it. So if you don't have one, I think that is the number one first step.

And it doesn't matter if you have a lot of newsletter subscribers, you could have five. It doesn't matter if you have two listeners, it doesn't matter who own your personal brand. And I believe strongly in that.

Daniel, what do you feel about all that?

I want to ask you a question on that. I know you say email and podcast, but you also have an owned Asset, your website.

Jschwedelson.com how important is it to own a website that has your expertise, your assets on there, something that people can look up online?

You want to have a website that speaks to all the different things that you're doing and that people can get in contact with you easily. I don't think it's necessary that you have a website that has a ton of pages and it's really complicated and it's overly complicated navigation.

You need a website like I have jschwettleson.com, which is separate from my corporate pages, where anybody can go there.

And if they want me to be on their podcast or they want to partner with me in some way, they want to talk about whatever, they can go there and we can interact. So it's like a catch all. So having something like that has been hugely valuable for me.

And even if you're a one person shop, you can have a newsletter, you can have a podcast, you can have a personal page. All this takes no time, costs you nothing. And as long as you're consistent doing it, you will win. And I think it's critical.

I mean, your newsletter, Daniel, like your newsletter is enormous, right? I mean, you, you buy into this.

Yeah, I totally buy into this. And I think I'll add something to this of what I did before I started a newsletter, which I think is very crucial, is also building on rented land.

And what I mean by rented land is a place where there's existing digital foot traffic or organic reach. And that means a social following. But I want to preface, when I say building on digital land is, I say focus building on that. Rented land.

Be great at One channel. I see so many people who want to go on LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, all at one time and all their content is average.

They don't learn the, the platform that they're doing it and they're not growing on those platforms. It's better to be the best on LinkedIn than a C player on 20 platforms. It's just how it works and how it works in life.

It's better to double down on your strengths than improve your weaknesses. I see this mistake happen all the time, even in social media teams when you're starting out.

Like, it's good to have maybe an account on Instagram and maybe repurpose some things, but it should not spend more than 5% of your time on that.

But I heavy focus on that one channel learning why people are on LinkedIn or why people on TikTok, what type of content, formats, hooks, captions work. Who are the influencers in that space? In your space? What does the algorithm like on that platform?

Because every social media platform is like speaking a little, a different language. It's like trying to speak English to someone who only speaks French. They're not going to understand you.

The social media platform is not going to understand you. You have to 100% know that platform and be great at it. Before you moved on.

For example, when I started, I only started on LinkedIn and then when I got pretty good at LinkedIn, I started a podcast. When I got pretty good at podcast, I built a LinkedIn page. When I got pretty good at LinkedIn page, I moved to Twitter or X.

When I got pretty good at X, I moved to Instagram. It was a slow progression of being good at those platforms and then it becomes more autopilot for you and then you can go to other platforms.

When I started going heavy on social, we tried, I tried to be everywhere on, on threads, on Instagram, on YouTube, on whatever. And, and what I found was me and my team, we were spread so thin that we did all of them mediocre at best.

And I think a lot of people and a lot of companies make the mistake is they think they're checking a box. Okay, we post on Instagram, we're good. We post on Twitter, we're good. Posted on here, good. And you're checking a box that you got it out there.

That's not how you're going to grow your personal brand or your company brand for that matter, because no one's going to care about your content because you, you don't care because you're not Focused on it. So I focus way heavy on LinkedIn and that's worked well for me.

When you look at somebody like, like Amy Porterfield, right, Her whole thing is on Instagram. She, she barely is on LinkedIn or any other platform. Her whole business is built on Instagram.

And like Daniel said, yeah, you master one thing and then you can go on to other ones. I think it's, I think it's a really good route.

Let's talk about podcasts for a second because we're on one and I think people are confused about should they have one? They think podcasts aren't for them. They're just a listener. I don't need a podcast. Then why should people have a podcast?

I'll have a, I'll say a hot take about podcasts right now. Podcasts are a better networking tool than marketing channel.

Yes.

That's just a fact for me. And I'll admit I know there's people out there who think I'm not the best podcaster in the world.

And I'll admit it, I am not the best podcast in the world. The reason I do podcasting is because one, I get to talk to sweet people like Jay Shreddleson or like cool people and I get to learn their ideas.

And the idea, I get to hype up other marketers by doing it. And it's a great way to network.

For example, when you launch virtual events or you want to people to show up to other things, you now have built in speakers. If you need help with digital marketing or some sort of marketing, you can go find you someone on your podcast might know about it.

You just build a network.

And it's also the best hack to say instead of saying, let me pick your brain for 15 minutes, let me come on your pod, my podcast, come on my podcast and share your ideas.

That success rate of people who wouldn't have never spoke to me at the beginning with me saying, come on my podcast versus pick your brain in 50 for 15 minutes. I probably would have got a 1% or less take rate for the, the pick your brain. And I probably got a 40 to 50% reply rate for podcasts.

Even when people said no, I at least I knew I probably got 50 to 60% of people saying they want they give a response if I say come on my podcast.

Yeah, and I'll add to that a few things. You know, you may be listening, say, oh, maybe I just graduated college. I can't have a podcast. I'm not an expert.

Or let's say you're a seasoned professional and you're like, I don't have the time to promote this thing. And it just, it sounds like too much. I'm not somebody everybody's going to listen to. That doesn't matter.

Okay, here's what, here's the value of a podcast. What Daniel said is true. It is the ultimate way to meet people. Who cares how many people actually listen?

You're meeting the person you're interviewing. But let's say you're somebody who's like, I want to speak at conferences. Right?

That would be amazing because that'd be great for me and my brand and whatever. If you have a podcast now, you could create these little videos.

You can post them and when you want to speak at a conference, you send them the videos from your podcast. Say, look, this is how I articulate myself. This is my ability to speak. And all of a sudden it also forces you to, to research.

Whenever I have somebody coming on my podcast or I'm going to talk about a particular, I have no choice. I gotta look stuff up, I gotta learn about stuff. And all of a sudden I become more knowledgeable because I have this thing that I am glued to.

Is it a hamster wheel? Yes. Is it a pain in the butt? A thousand percent. But it is for everybody. You are listening. This is what you've been waiting for.

This is the wake up call. You should have a podcast because it will help you grow as a human being, in my opinion. I get very excited about that.

Also. I'll add one thing. It's a great way to create more content.

Yeah.

It's a great way to get clips. It's a great way to turn those clips into social posts. It's a great way to make that, that idea that you fleshed out become a newsletter.

It's a great way to create more and more content. It's one of the best tools in the world to create content and distribute content.

So I think of it as a content marketing tool, a personal branding tool and just a, a self learning tool for me. So more than a marketing channel.

And the last thing I'll say about the personal brand, whether it's your newsletter, your podcast, whatever it may be, everybody starts from zero, okay? Even the biggest ones that are out there, okay? Everybody starts with zero subscribers, zero listeners. And you need to start somewhere.

And there isn't anybody that's successful with their podcast or successful with their newsletter. I can guarantee you this. Every single one of them will would tell you they wish they started it sooner because they could have grown that much more.

So today is the right day to start any of this stuff. So, Daniel, what do you want to say as we wrap this one up?

I just want to say that a personal brand is the new resume. You want to be the one who owns the narrative of your life and your career. And the best way to do that is do it on channels that what we said.

LinkedIn, email, podcast, social, whatever channel you're on, just do that at scale.

It's really networking at scale, and it helps you be in front of more people, build your expertise in the market, and also have expertise in the market to share to employers or future customers or whoever you trying to target.

Love it. All right, we did it again. Another episode of the Bathroom Break.

I'm like three Celsiuses deep, so I actually got to go take care of some action here. And make sure to check us out next week. Check you later, Daniel. Come on, man. I got to get back to work. Get out of there.

All right, while he's still in there. This is Jay. Check out my podcast, do this, not that, for Marketers.

Each week we share really quick tips on stuff that can improve your marketing and hope you give it a try. Oh, here's Daniel. He's finally out.

Back from my back. Bathroom Break, this is Daniel. Go follow the Marking Millennials podcast, but also tune into this series. It's once a week, the Bathroom Break.

We talk about marketing tips that we just spew out. And it could be anything from email subject line to any marking tips in the world. We'll talk about it. Just give us a.

A shout on LinkedIn and tell us what you want to hear. Peace out.

Later.