Why Personal Branding is Important for your Career

0:01
Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of image group international and award-winning image consulting and personal branding pioneer established in 1989. This podcast will bring you old school wisdom, inspiring ideas, strategies and hacks for the new tech world. Here you will learn everything about personal branding: the system, the techniques and the right mindset to have a successful personal brand, image and reputation.

0:30
Hello, everybody, today I will be sharing with you why personal branding is important to your career. Before I start, I just want to thank you for listening to this episode. Let me introduce myself. My name is John Michail. I'm the founder and group CEO of image group International. We're an internationally based personal and business branding consultancy, situated here in Melbourne, Australia. And we specialize in personal brand management, personal branding, image consulting, and reputation management, what we do is elevate your personal and business brand in the marketplace. We've been around for over 30 years, established in 1989, and have worked supported some of the biggest organizations in the world, including some very senior executives, entrepreneurs, and changemakers.

1:18
Well, I decided to create this podcast for a reason: to really build awareness of how personal business branding can make a difference, definitely from a personal point of view in your life, and your career and from a business point of view. Because there's a lot of misinformation around personal branding online today. The podcast will be weekly, every Thursday, one episode will be with me, and the other episode will have a special guest. The guests are important for the podcast, because the guests will be sharing some of the evidence of how personal branding helped their lives, and of course, their businesses. So let's start the show.

1:57
First, I need to explain something to you, there is a difference between personal brand and personal branding. And that difference is very, very simple. A personal brand is passive. Personal Branding is active. So as an example, you might have a personal brand, but you might not have personal branding. Personal Branding is the system that underpins personal brand. So without a system on the brand, what you have is an ad hoc approach. And ad hoc approach is what you see a lot on social media and so on online, that at times, it's a lot of mixed messages and doesn't lead anywhere specifically valuable. So to summarize, personal branding is the system behind your brand without the system, you're doing personal brand in a very ad hoc way.

2:58
Now that you understand what exactly personal branding is, it's don't understand how it can change your career, and your overall future. And how you would do that is because it cements you, it positions you what it does is get you known and recognized. In a world full of noise, if you don't get known and recognized, you're just a big part of the number. And that means you get lost in the crowd. Now from a career point of view, that's actually not the most effective strategy. And of course, from a business point of view, people will not find you. And if people don't find you, there is no business. And today with the will of technology online and Google, you can not afford to have a personal and of course business brand. So what does that mean? Okay, from an individual perspective, it's about getting noticed, it's about getting known. It's about being respected for your value. If you have no personal brand, basically where you are treated as a commodity. And as you've discovered, if you have a good look, in society, commodities aren't worth many personal brands are examples of that we will share with you as we're going through the program. But personal branding is actually your insurance policy. It's your opportunity to really shine and get to know why ahead of your competition.

4:30
Let me give you a personal example that I had with personal branding. In my late 20s. I was a fashion designer for at least seven years on doing all my work getting some really cool jobs out there and of course, creating some great masterpieces. But guess what the world didn't know. And then a won for the world Corporation. I became a young designer of the Year award. And that put me in the spotlight overnight. I was on the front page of the newspaper. And in 24 hours people that had no me prior, now recognize the work that I was a winner. Why? Because I won an award. Why? Because I was on the front page of a newspaper, where 24 hours earlier, they didn't recognize me.  Okay, so in 24 hours, basically, you go from knowing to unknown, and people start to give you a different level of respect than they did 24 hours earlier. That was my big aha moment to say, Wow, this is amazing. And of course, you know, a couple of years later, is what actually got me to get out of the fashion world totally, and start a new career in the whole coaching and consulting world.

5:47
Now, you must be wondering, okay, so how can I start developing my personal branding? We will talk about this in the next episode. If you have any specific questions, though, please feel free to email me directly. The email is on the description of the episode. We are close to the end of the show. I hope you've liked this episode, and we have given you some practical insights. You can find me on social media. You can follow me on Twitter as Jon underline Michael, or on LinkedIn as Jon Michael, and on Facebook as image group International. All the information will be in the episode description. Also, remember to subscribe to the podcast on the platform that you're listening to. So every time we have a new episode, you will be notified.

6:38
If you have a friend that you think would like this episode, please share our content with him or her. We all would be very grateful for that. And thank you all and I look forward to chatting again next week. Have a great week.

6:50
Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass" Podcast is sponsored by Image Group International, a global team of practical, digitally savvy personal brand and image strategists, based in Australia, committed to maximizing your impact, influence and authority in the business world.   To learn more and apply for your personal coaching, seminars and group workshops please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.