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Welcome to Jon Michail’s Personal Branding Masterclass. Jon is the founder and CEO of Image Group International, an 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.

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Hello and welcome back to my master class. I'm John, Michael. It's great to have you here again with me today, before we get into today's episode, I'd love to stay connected with you online.  Connect with me on social media. My Twitter, or X, is Jon_Michail, my LinkedIn is Jon Michail, and you can find me as Image Group International on Facebook.  Let's connect, engage and keep this conversation going now. Let's discuss today's topic, which is fully timely my opinion, and incredibly powerful, the year end personal brand audit. So auditing a personal brand as part of your year end review is a game changer. If you want to start the new year with clarity and impact, grab yourself a pen and paper or a notepad, from a tech perspective, because today is all about practical, actionable steps, 123, that you can put into action and seriously, basically show up in 2025 as a brand new person certainly can transform your positioning big time. So why a personal brand audit is crucial? Let's start with this in business companies. In business, companies routinely conduct year end audits to assess performance, identify what's working and adjust when necessary. So why shouldn't your personal brand get the same level of attention? Here's a fact for you. According to a study by LinkedIn, 85% of hiring managers say that a strong personal brand is influential in the decision to hire or engage someone. If you're not actively managing your brand, you're just being left behind in a world that's increasingly driven by perception and much more. Warren Buffett said once, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. Think about that for a moment. Your personal brand isn't static. It evolves, whether you are intentional about it or not, if you're not regularly assessing how you're showing up, you could be leaving opportunities on the table, or worse, miscommunicating who you truly are. So let's break this down into five actionable steps, and let's start off with step number one. So reflect on this year, on your achievements and the challenges you faced. 

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This is where you take stock of where you've accomplished things this year over, obviously, the last 12 months, and just make a note of them. We often move so quickly that we forget to celebrate our wins, especially now with so much of our attention is caught up online. So take a moment to write down your successes. Did you launch a new product? For instance, a new project, gain a significant client, expand your network with high impact connections. Acknowledge these wins, but don't stop there. So let's get real. Where did these things fall short? Where were projects that were supposed to go one way or the other end up so did they go to plan? Did your messaging stick okay with obviously your mark, or did you miss the mark? Peter Drucker, the management guru, once said, what gets measured gets managed. Self Awareness is the foundation of growth. So you can't grow if you're not self aware. This is my strongest opinion. If you're just getting more education, that's not self awareness, that's just knowledge data, etc. So knowing where you stumbled is just as valuable celebrating your victories, because it helps you pivot with purpose. Step two is next, and that is assessing your online presence. We all know this, offline branding is fantastic. We strongly support that, but it's only half of the coin. Now the other half of the coin, the other side, is definitely the online aspect. So let's get practical. In today's digital world, your online presence is often the first impression people have of you. Again, according to LinkedIn data, profiles with professional photos, for instance, get 21 times more profile views and 36 more times more messages than those without. You know, it's only a few years ago when I had an interesting conversations in the seminar around why should I show my photo? Well, the reality is, you better show it, because it builds trust. And if you've got any story around that, then just know that you're not going to be trusted if you haven't got a photo. Bottom line, there is a lot of opinions out there, and what's important here is that we only focus. On people that really know the game, as opposed to opinions that are really like what I would call these big farts in the wind. They come and they go, and normally they just leave a big smell, as opposed to really leaving anything of value. 

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So ask yourself this, does my LinkedIn profile, website and bio reflect who I am today, or is it stuck in the past? Am I showcasing the skills, experiences and expertise that align with my current goals? Is my messaging consistent across all platforms? And most importantly, do you appear as someone who can deliver value for a fee? Yes, you got that right? It's for a fee, not for free. Your expertise is worth something. Make sure that's clear, otherwise, you're playing the game called a race to the bottom. My advice, take 30 minutes this week to order your LinkedIn profile, update your headline, refresh your summary, and ensure that your skills are most important. Results reflect what you want to be known for in 2025 now for step three, gathering feedback is what we call, of course, in our work, feed forward, because feedback, it's a negative it's basically, there's nothing positive about feedback. It's always negative. So the feed forward concept is whatever feedback you get, we're going to reframe that into something positive for the future. So here's the thing, you're often too close to your own brand to see it objectively. And research from Harvard Business Review shows that leaders who regularly solicit feedback are definitely, of course, that's a technical word for feed forward. In our opinion, are perceived as more effective. But here's the thing, get feed forward from people you respect and trust. Here's a practical exercise, send a brief message to a few key people in your network and ask what three words come into mind when you think of me now, if do ask him to be honest with you, of course, as honest people can be, how do you perceive my strengths and weaknesses? What do you think I could do more of in the coming year? Remember, feed forward is a gift, but only if you're willing to listen and act on it. 

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Sometimes people will see strengths you've been under, playing hiding, or identify blind spots you didn't even realize existed. The only caveat is, again, that they must be frank with you because of the pressures of cancer culture today, and rarely do people tell you the truth directly to your face. Let's deal with step four, and step four is about how to set your personal brand goals for the new year. Okay, so let's get started. You've done the hard work of reflecting, assessing and gathering feed forward. It's time to use these insights to set some strategic personal goals for 2025 and let's be really specific based on what you've discovered, pick one or two key areas to focus on. For instance, position yourself as a thought leader by writing articles, speaking at industry events or being featured in the media, including legacy media, deepen your network by collaborating with industry authorities, not just so called influencers who add questionable real value, especially long term, or maybe it's about Showing up more authentically in your daily interactions, consider all of this, because the way you show up is obviously the way you're going to be reflected into the world. So this is very, very important that we look at that. And next step five is really continuous improvement, something that we've supported all along. And obviously, if you know a lot about my work, it's what we've been doing for 35 years. It's something that never stops, as I mentioned. And by the way, continuous improvement is only a problem if you don't want to improve, but if you're looking at life as an unlimited possibility of growth, potential, possibilities, continuous improvement is something you look forward to, it's it because you're going to grow, you're going to evolve, and you're going to be so much better version of yourself. So as I mentioned the previous podcast, auditing your brand isn't a once in a year exercise, it's ongoing. The Japanese have a concert called Kaizen, which means continuous improvement. So apply that philosophy to your personal brand, small, consistent tweaks can lead to exponential growth over time. Warren Buffett once said, The best investment you can make is in yourself. And of course, I've spoken about this before, and of course, I agree with that 100%

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so remember, your personal. Is a living, breathing entity. It evolves as you do. To sum up for today, conducting a year end personal brand audit is not just a nice to have. It's an essential if you want to start the new year with clarity, purpose and focus, all our clients would be doing some sort of sort of audit to see the results I've achieved this year, where they're going to improve, where the gaps exist, and, of course, how to recreate, reinvent for 2025 so before the year wraps up, schedule an hour to order your personal brand using the steps we discussed today, I guarantee you that you'll uncover insights that will set you up for a powerful start to the new year. If you found value in today's episode, please share it with someone you might feel that will benefit. And of course, subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you're ready to take your personal brand to next level, reach out to Patricia at Patricia at patricia@image group.com.au , for a tailored consultation, and of course, an opportunity that might include also personal or and professional brand audit. I want to thank you so much for tuning in today until next time at Big cheerio to a new year filled with clarity purpose and prosperity for you and your family. Stay tuned. Stay authentic, and of course, keep on building your brand till next year, big cheerio

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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 personal coaching, seminars, and group workshops, please visit imagegroup.com.au or call 1800 631 311.