Personal vs Business Branding with Mark Hodgson

Personal vs Business Branding with Mark Hodgson (Episode 96)

branding video coaching video marketing video marketing podcast Feb 25, 2022

Creating a brand gives your business or product a better chance of standing out among others. But brand isn't limited to business. A professional who has honed his expertise for years can make his own personal brand. So how do you figure out yours?

Welcome to 'Video Made Simple' video podcast featuring marketers, entrepreneurs & clients who help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day-to-day communication. 

In this episode, Chris Schwager (Video Marketer from Ridge Films) is joined by Mark Hodgson (CEO and Principal Consultant of Mark Hodgson Transformational Leadership Consultancy, author of "Time to Shine") as they talk about the importance of personal branding, and figuring out which brand works for you. 

Mark Hodgson: So the question is, what do I need to do to attract a customer in a way that they say yes. Even yes to giving me that first. Yes, it's probably I'll give you five seconds. And that's kind of interesting. And I think could be five seconds retention. I like it, I might give you 30 seconds. If I like what I got after 30 seconds then, I might give you the two or three minutes and then I might spend half an hour with you on a webinar or something, or a call here. We don't have that first piece that catches the attention. You could be the smartest person on the planet, but now we'll be commercially struggling.


 

Links and Resources

FOLLOW CHRIS and let us know you’ve heard the podcast.
FOLLOW MARK and visit his WEBSITE.
THE POWER OF VIDEO MARKETING  View on demand in 60-minutes. 7 lessons to kickstart your video marketing journey.
DIY VIDEO PROGRAM Create your own videos with a push of a button.
 
 

Video Transcription:

Mark Hodgson  0:01 

So the question is, what do I need to do to attract a customer in a way that they say yes. Even yes to giving me that first. Yes, it's probably I'll give you five seconds. And that's kind of interesting. And I think could be five seconds retention. I like it, I might give you 30 seconds. If I like what I got after 30 seconds then, I might give you the two or three minutes and then I might spend half an hour with you on a webinar or something, or a call here. We don't have that first piece that catches the attention. You could be the smartest person on the planet, but now we'll be commercially struggling.

 Chris Schwager  0:32 

Hello, video marketing professionals. Welcome to the podcast that takes the mystery out of producing videos. I'm your host, Chris Schwager, joined by Mr. Brendan Southall. Hello, Mr. Brendan Southall.

 Brendan Southall  0:44 

Hello, Mr. Chris Schwager. That's a very personal intro, but thank you very much. Yes, I'm very interested in learning what the difference is between personal and business branding. Why do we need to distinguish the two.

Chris Schwager  0:56 

Today our guest is Mark Hodgson, the CEO of Mark Hodgson Transformational Leadership Consultancy, author of the book "Time to Shine," the focus is on what people need to do, be, and build to become an authentic influencer. He is also the principal consultant working with his clients across change management, thought leadership and executive coaching. But primarily his focus is on building personal brand. Big heroes like Gary Vaynerchuk and Donald Miller are some of the big names in the world of personal branding. And not surprisingly, Mark is a certified coach from Business Made Simple University, founded by Donald Miller. Mark also lives out in Northern Beaches, Sydney, enjoys life with his wife, his two teens, and he's very special dog called Money. So to teach us how to create a more authentic, profitable and energetic presence in your marketplace, here's our chat with Mark Hodgson. Mark, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us how did you get started and all this

 Mark Hodgson  1:55 

My last corporate role, which is about 15 years ago now was leading a business transformation of large Australian, not for profit. And at the end, we did a fantastic job. We turned a million dollar loss into a $4 million profit three years and did it the right way, by what I like to say, Bring out the greatness and other so that was fantastic. And at the end of that extraordinary experience, do you know what happened.

 They fired me, they fired me, they fired they fired my leadership team who were clearly outperforming everyone else. And I thought fuck this, we're gonna be soldiers. I'm going to set up my own leadership consultancy, helping people to change and transform and I guess do the similar journey to what what I've done. And it's interesting. We're in this realm now you have the great resignation. And it's like that, but yeah, 10, 12 years ago, it's that kind of dynamic. So it's amazing how that's come full circle. So yeah, I've been doing this for 10 years now, specializing in leadership and change. But really, once you get deeper in that comes a little bit really about personal transformation. And a big part of personal transformation is how you can show your work, if you're working for yourself. If your work yourself, you need to build a professional brand. And you need to become an influencer in your marketplace. So all of those things kind of lead you to this area of personal and professional brand and influence, which in itself is people think it's all about branding and colors and fonts and stuff like that, it's actually almost got nothing to do with that. It's actually having the getting to the point where you're comfortable showing up as who you really are, with a message clearly articulates how you help your customer. So that's how I got to where I am today been doing it for 10 years, and loving loving every minute of the adventure

Chris Schwager  3:35 

When you've been being a crash test dummy working out how to build that transition out of the corporate career. So why did you focus on personal branding for your clients?

Mark Hodgson  3:46 

As I say it's really an evolution as you go through that process. And you start to build up different skills and areas of expertise, like technical stuff and doing DIY because obviously, when you work for an organization, its IT people in HR people and finance people, a whole lot of stuff is done for you. Then suddenly you turn up on your own running your own consultants, CEO of you, and you've got to work out all those bits in order to pass and run your business, all that and all that sort of stuff. But once you've got through that piece, you actually realize that to actually stand out and invest Very highly competitive marketplace that you don't need me to tell you. It's getting noisier and noisier and noisier. And we get to this part where you know, just being good at what you do isn't enough, it just isn't and you've got, you've almost got to give yourself the chance, giving the people the chance to actually listen to you to find out how you can help them get through that door.

 4:49 And really important to that having that first conversation is building a brand that actually gets people's attention in a world where everyone's and everyone's rushed, everyone's gonna need time. So the question is, what do I need to do to attract the customer? My target customer the way they say? Yes, even yes to giving me that first Yes, is probably I'll give you five seconds of my image that looks kind of interesting. And I think could be five minutes, right? spicery, five seconds or attention, I like it, I might give you 30 seconds. But if I liked what I got, after 30 seconds, then I might give you the two or three minutes. And then I might spend half an hour with you on a webinar or something, or a call. But that's we don't have that first piece that captures the attention. You could be the smartest person on the planet. But now you will be commercially struggling.

 Chris Schwager  5:26 

So let's broaden the horizon a little bit. Why is personal branding important to business? Because I think what you're talking about is a specific area of marketing related but why is the personal branding so important? Why can't businesses or you know solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, or people that sort of out there working for themselves just go and put their name do they do they need a personal brand established to their name,

Mark Hodgson  5:50 

The reality is, however good you are, we got to capture people's attention. I talked about this idea that the world stopped listening. As I've just explained, we've all stopped listening. Because we're all so busy. We're full up.. I talked about this idea. There's four key questions that we need to sort of capture in our personal and professional brand. What do you know? Who do you help? How do you add value? And why are you different? Four questions, what you know who you help how you add value, why you're different. Sounds easy, really, actually a ton of work to be able to answer those crisply and authentically. But I think if you can do that, then you've got a pretty good chance of actually, as I say, capturing people's attention in a sentence about marketing, it's certainly about being promotional. Because I'm guessing most people, most people in business want to be commercially successful. Unless you're the only person in town who does what you do, which is unlikely you are going to be competing for the eyeballs and years and fundamentally the attention of your customers. So I think you need it from a marketing perspective. But also, being able to answer those four questions is also extraordinarily clarifying, for your offer. And I think the thinking behind that brand piece is really germane in helping us to get that real focus that what we do, who we help, how do we add value? Why would we can obsess on that I think we're in a good place not just from a marketing perspective, but also from a business and a clarity, leadership perspective, and attracting starters and all those things.

Chris Schwager  7:18 

So you're talking more in, I guess, at this point, or how one is communicating to the market or at least demonstrating the uniqueness to the market. I'm interested to understand the definition here between personal branding and I'm super keen to get Brendan's input here as well because my limiting belief has been around well isn't that still marketing? Like isn't the concept of trying to get uniqueness, clarity, taking out the bullshit you know, refining the message you know, reducing noise all that still marketing still you know, your ability to sell yourself I mean, still not understanding how the distinction with how it correlates to a brand as such maybe you could help me with that.

 Mark Hodgson  7:59 

I guess the two circles are overlapping having a marketing strategy. The marketing is the outbound the go if you if you can ask crispy those four questions from a strategic perspective. What are we really really good at it? Why would people do business with us on this thing? And not without competitive you can answer if you get crystal clear strategy that focus doing one thing and getting better and better and better as a statement. Many successful businesses that's what they do that one thing supremely well. The marketing is just the out is that is that is like the outward iteration of the strategy. They overlap completely. And you know, whilst I do a lot of work on professional branding and legal strategy with organizations as well. And most strategy work is about taking stuff out, stop doing this, stop doing that. You don't need to add that thing. You don't need to sit on it, you get the one thing that you might most of you might know the 80-20 thing, what's the thing that you get my 80% of the money from get supremely good at doing that? There's lots of businesses where that isn't quite as true. And it doesn't fit everything. But the general principle, to understand that if you're to get to the point where you can, you can succinctly cap capture your offering and your message in your brand, whether it's a business brand, or professional, personal brand, when you can do that, and it dovetail seamlessly with what you actually do. And it isn't just an advertisement, somebody don't actually do, which can be a disconnect, right. But if those two, if it's actually true, I would suggest you've got to, you've got every chance of having a very good business. And that can keep growing and growing and scaling is your clarity of thought.

 Chris Schwager  9:31 

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Chris Schwager  10:11 

From what I understand here, and what I'm curious to know is and we've had this in many scenarios where the companies that we've worked for, we'd take a key person out of the organization's era, this is the guy this is going to be the face or the guy that we're going to really build up. So what I'm interested to know from you is how do you know if your business fits their personal brand framework? And

 Mark Hodgson  10:35 

or the business brand?

 Chris Schwager  10:36   

I guess, yeah, is there a difference?

Mark Hodgson  10:37 

And I don't think we're going to get a definitive answer on this the way I think I mean, so you know, at the moment, I run a relatively small consultancy, it's me and a couple of collaborators and VAs and Sokol. So effectively, my business is also me. So I you can't sell my business because because unless I come with it has relatively little battle value. But I want lots of other organizations where they've got a very strong brand of themselves, they're developed. And they're positioning themselves in a market sector with an offering and a brand. But I'm also working with, for example, some of the employees, some of the executives of those businesses, and they develop what I would call is a professional brand.

 That that is that is distinct from the company, the company in business, but is supportive of it, it reflects in it, and they certainly can't be just diverge, I've got quite a few guys who I'm working with, and we position them as a business founder. So they have a founder brand. And they might be the CEO of a business that's got its own brand, but the brand, there's got to be an affinity, if the brand of the business is progressive, and agility, and customer centric and all those kind of things, then the brand or the brand of the CEO or other people were putting up there as brand ambassadors, if you will, then they need to be congruent with that don't and they can't be they can't be incongruent.

11:50 They don't have to be the same. I'm not saying that the same, I think they crucially can be different, but they need to be congruent. So that's the kind of differentiation This is a difficult area. But the first thing is to decide is decide is do you have a business that you're building a business brand around that you can support with your personal brand, or is it or is it for small consultancy? Often is it's you that individual user thought and the user, you're the solopreneur that's, that's how I see.

Chris Schwager  12:16 

Yeah, and it's it's a great perspective. And I'm on that I'll just kind of go a little bit deeper, I guess and understand. You talked about your  business doesn't function without you. So and I'm sure that goes for a lot of people unless they're willing to scale and you know, find ways to replace themselves.

12:36 So I guess your personal brand, how does that differentiate from a micro or small business? Can you define the two between the two between those two areas? I guess to understand, wouldn't a brand in some respects be kind of almost evolving and everlasting in a way. I mean, how does that differentiate? And Brendan you can step in here because you can see the confusion on my face. That's probably more around probably more around defining the question here. But yeah,

Brendan Southall  13:06 

Well, maybe we say yeah, let's use Ridge Films. As an example. We've got Chris who's always front and center for our market. So he basically would often set up a deal and then that would come through to me and then because I'm not so present on LinkedIn, my personal brand isn't as strong as Chris's. There's always a question of who is this guy? Is he as qualified to help me as much as Chris's? So how does that work for organizations of small medium businesses?

 Mark Hodgson  13:34 

I love the idea that you what you what you ideally want is you want your leaders in your business showing up as thought leaders and influencers in their in their market and being impressive and being aligned, obviously, with the company's values and what they what it's doing. And I think that creates this lovely halo effect around the business. So you get that lovely symbiotic. So they're different, but they're complementary. So yeah, I saw that. I saw that guy, Brendan, from Richmond, he was really cool. And then Chris was doing all this stuff on video, which was really cool. Those Ridge film guys that good. And you said, that's a sales focus or a technical video focus. But I just want to see people from that business, turn it up in a way that's impressive, professional, energetic, yeah, aligned with it. And I think that's how it kind of works. I guess one of the reasons one of the reasons this is it's hard to put your finger on it is because there is there it's not, it's not binary, there isn't this, you do this? And you do that? And I think a lot of people especially don't like the personal brand thing, because they want to, they want to hide away from this.

14:35 So Oh, no, no, well, it's a business brand, I've got no relation to it so well. But if you're a founder of an organization, or someone who's Senior in organization, I actually think it's essential. I think it's imperative that you and your leaders are showing up as creating a halo effect around the brand. And in terms of a way to create influence to create sales to attract people, investors, board members, whatever to an organization that I reckon, I reckon that's what leadership looks like now. And so you know, when you see these leaders say things, I'm a terrible public speaker, or I don't like doing video, or I don't need a personal brand but it's like, I challenge you say, you should do. I think that's an outdated concept. If you don't have one, I think it costing your business money. And I think I'd be asking some pretty hard questions. Because as we know, it's an online Well, everyone, everything's digital, right? The first thing we do when we come across anyone, we go on our phones or laptops, or we LinkedIn, we check them out, if their profiles at me, what does that say about them? What does it say about the organization? You know, so I think we've got to play in this space, however challenging, we find it and lots of people do find it challenging, shall we might, we might touch on.

Chris Schwager  15:40 

So we're very much I mean, I to Brendan's point and more of an influence, I guess, in that I'm got some face equity out through, you know, LinkedIn and the videos on the website. And on top of stuff, I don't have like a logo attached to me. You know, I'm still working for Ridge Films and working on behalf of Ridge Films, but I'm trying to, you know, amplify, effectively what we do not by just putting product videos out and showing examples of our work, but actually putting myself out there to connect with prospective buyers, right. So where does the line does the line blur between influence, like humanization? Like personalization? And, and the personal brand as such? Because Because I mean, technically, do I have a personal brand? I mean, you probably know enough about me, I guess to distinguish it,

Mark Hodgson  16:31 

I think lines are probably not useful. The way I would think I would think about this, like now life is about marketing and strategy overlap, to get that real clarity and thinking behind your brand strategy. I think, again, with this, you know, brand, sales, profile, a whole lot of things overlap. And then we have to get comfortable in those. And this can sound a bit.

16:50 So this might sound a bit gnarly, I think we have to get comfortable in the intersections of those things. It's a little bit ambiguous. But just because we can't define it with a scalpel. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be playing an experiment and working out what that looks like. And I think the other interesting thing, especially what you guys, remember you This is evolving, it's changing so fast, and there isn't. This isn't marketing 101 in 2020, looks like this. Who knows what it looks like? It's changing so fast. What we do now is we need to be playing at the at the cutting edge of this and experimenting, what I do know for sure, and I'm not saying what's right, I don't know, what is wrong is sitting with your arms. I don't need this, I don't need video, I've got an old resume on LinkedIn. And I'll be fine as well. That's that's just playing yourself as a dinosaur in a digital age.

17:36 And a lot of the people I work with, it's helping especially people who are in corporate at the moment. So for them to probably leave corporate or transform or reinvent into a post corporate, professional, sort of chapter for themselves. You know, they've forever hidden under the under the you know, who have i on the x y Zed nav, because I'm always amazing. Now, I didn't put because I work for an APM and a manager you're going well that's the brand equity, which sits with NAV or Ford or or Google. So but now when you take away Ford, NAV or Google, who are you?

18:09 You start pulling naked in the snow, right? So you've got to build a brand that that because fundamentally, you don't have end up "I used to work for?" How weak is that? how are you I used to be that I used to be the be, who you now? And that's that's the chat that's a challenge and that's why was the I don't know the answer these questions. I think what I do now is like we need to be playing in this space and try and showing up and having a go on Looking at what works, what doesn't work, people lie. And then we're in the game, because the game has changed.

 Chris Schwager  18:36 

We've got a huge amount of leverage now through these free platforms, you know? Yeah. And it's phenomenal that more businesses aren't experimenting, and aren't using this concept of personalization and humanization, which the market is being suffocated by, you know, brand and product. And, you know, there's so much opportunity for companies to put themselves in front to put themselves out there to diversify the way that they do things and think about things. And you know, that, you know, an example, for instance, is, if we keep choking our LinkedIn feed with, you know, here's the latest podcast is a lot of podcasts, you know, things get stale and boring, but you know, put a dad hack video on how to max out your Soda Stream, and all of a sudden, you're getting engagement, because there's a sense of entertainment, there's a connection, there's things that are common to people, and all of a sudden, you know, whilst it's not doing anything, from a video marketing perspective, it is entertaining them enough to grab attention to grab eyeballs, and, you know, trickle them in from from there on enough of that, that facial time that enables them to continually stop scrolling and pay attention. You know, it's kind of like points in touch points, I guess, if you like to call, call them that but touch points of asset building in terms of whether one day they might actually the penny will drop and they go you know what, I will give Chris Schwager a call or I will give Ridge Films a call.

So you know, I guess we're just shifting a little bit because I went on a bit of a rant there. But where does storytelling come into this picture? Because it's so underutilized in marketing. It's ridiculous. And even, you know, people in the personal branding, company branding, I mean, that people just aren't using enough stories. How does that fit

Mark Hodgson  20:26 

I love story and that the ground is we all love story. If you do any research behind story at all, and you meant you mentioned Donald Miller and story brand. Yeah, the whole power of story, we just, we're all drawn to it. We love a story, we can't help ourselves. If we can have a marketing, I'm using the word hook. And it's not the right word. But it's kind of accurate in the sense that we can use a marketing hook that story that she invites people to into our store, or invites us into their story, if you can actually make your customer the hero. So rather than storytelling that we're fantastic, we've done this, we've got this many testimonials, we've got this many satisfied customers, all of which is good. But if you can spin it around and actually make your customer, the hero in your story, say what we do, we've done all the hard work to help you. We've worked with 1000s of people like so that you can solve this, so that you can achieve what you want so that you can cite win the day and overcome diversity and move from unhappiness to happiness or move from failure to say, or get what you want, or some version of that.

21:26 And it's really beautiful. I think I think the the reason I played around with that word hook again, because there's, I think something that sounds a bit disingenuous and fake. But if you can tell your story that is true to you, and he's authentic. And an authentic is a bit of an IRA. I think both storytelling and authenticity are a bit of an ironic, there we go, authenticity. But if you can find me fundamentally the personal brand, the video, everything, I think its essence, and we're getting deep here. But its essence, if you can show up as who you really are, as your best self, commercially within a commercial framework. I think that's all you can do. If you can do that, too. If you have to give yourself and your business or your business both, either or you'll give yourself the maximum chance of being successful

Chris Schwager  22:15 

Well, as a as an

Mark Hodgson  22:18 

It's extraordinarily how powerful, not easy to do, you're going to get over a whole a lot, quite a lot of typically, internal imposter syndrome, I'm not good enough. We know this 100 other people know that. Sharing that all those kinds of objections and procrastination, that populate our own mind. And I think even those of us who are playing this game, you know, sometimes you wake having, who will listen to me who's going to buy stuff from me, they click and go, those guys are looking at professional, those people. And so that imposter syndrome, they're not good, nothing floats around in all of us all the time. But if we can overcome that, and do the work to overcome that, which is fundamental by just showing up consistently, all the time, and sometimes will be great and some bold with it crack, but the point is to keep showing up, because that's how we get good and even great is showing up consistently.

23:06 If we can do that in chapter two, we really are authentically, and that is a form of storytelling, then that would attract the people who are attracted to us. I think one of the best ideas, the most important is, is we're not looking to attract the whole world. We're just trying to attract the people who are gonna want to do business with us, whatever that looks like. And we're gonna we're gonna want to do business with them. That's our tribe. That's, that's our network. All we need to do is work with those because for most of us, we're not going to run out of those people. And if we can do that, we're in a pretty good place. 

Brendan Southall  23:34

Is that typically how you would kind of work through a process with someone who doesn't have a personal brand? Like where do you start? Is it they even know that they have a personal brand? Or do you have to kind of milk it out of them?

Mark Hodgson  23:45 

I think of the personal brand recall and I'm happy to share on this I think people answer nine questions and they and they end up they end up with what I call they clean up their spot or what I call the influencer doll. The influencer doll has five places: asleep, agitated, active, amplified and awesome. And the reality is most people are asleep or hopefully ages agitators that far. I know I need to do something about this. And I need help to do it. And asleep is like those bigger don't contact me late. I'm the LinkedIn profile. You know the people on LinkedIn with no picture actually in their profile or their profile picture looks like it's from 20 years ago. A school photo Roughly cut to cut the cut half of the amount or something. So, yeah, that that's that's the, that's a good way to start. And you end up basically working out kind of where you are in this this thing and the logical next things to do.

24:34 And I think for most people, it's not so much the label of whether they whether they do or don't have a personal brand is to say, it's more than to understand, if they want to position themselves as a consultant, or solopreneur, or run a small business, or even if they're in an organization, they actually want to build their influence to become become an influencer in their marketplace, which, you know, I do a lot of work with, with professional executives, you've got no intention of leaving the organization. But as I say, I think I think being an Executive leader and organization now, it's not good enough to say we, I don't do that. It's like, Well, why don't you do that? I'm playing it to three farmer grant, I need you to do it, because that's what the best businesses do. And I think that's true. So they do need to develop that. And we, we can we can we can do some people to help them do it. By what am I trying to say? I think a lot of it's a mindset about I'm going to go on this journey.

25:22 Again, another eye-rolling word, would you agree with this? I think we need to make ourselves vulnerable. Okay, we need to make ourselves vulnerable. We're going to allow in a bit silly, occasionally, we're going to put stuff out there that people disagree, disagree with potentially. But fundamentally, we're going to start to learn to to have that dialogue with the market isn't it isn't it isn't an arrogant dialogue. It's a questioning dialogue, dialogue, and it's, what's the word? It's a generous dialogue? It's a lot that I'm not quite sure. But I'm kind of seeing where we are here, isn't it? This is where we are now. I think we kind of need to go here. Here's three ideas I've got, I think we could start with but what do you think? I think that that kind of that kind of language suggested in that authentic and honest way, is how we move with old problems. Whereas you think, for example, in politics, and most leadership in most organizations weren't very far from that, because it comes from ego, and win and lose. But if we can actually genuinely do that, Trump IQ is naive. But when we do that, well, that's what it looks like, like people are drawn to that because fundamentally, we're problem solvers, people are going to make things better. And if we could build a brand, that people who have integrity, good values are working hard to, to advance the market to help their customers to help their business their brand, that's got to be a good thing.

26:38 As you said, Chris, I think it's so few businesses, take the types of start to work in this, like, it's not expensive. And we're not like buying a ton of advertising. It's really, I mean, the mark up, they'll pay you, they'll pay me to do some work to actually get over themselves to start playing. But once they get going, you know, I love this thing is the idea that you're just getting to press send a couple of times on LinkedIn, when they post a video or a post that three or four times you realize when you press send that you don't find new rockets up, or the internet doesn't you don't get 1000s of haters, or you just don't. And you currently Okay, actually, I post this article, it wasn't very good 10 people I haven't heard from heard off for five years. So that was nice. Yes. Oh, that's great. Oh, that's quite nice. It's surprised and then off, they go and get better and better and better.

27:30 So that's how it works. I think it's with that generosity of spirit, you invite people to enter into this, rather than this sort of fearful sense of I've got to be a thought leader. I think thought leader has actually been very generous. And it's not an arrogant thing. It's not academic, it's basic comes from a sense of solving problems, and showing up as who you really are. And then most of the people we're talking about smart people in organizations. They do generally most people most people want to help people get better than themselves, that their customers is kind of capturing that in a way that is shareable in a way that attracts attracts people and starts from the small

 Chris Schwager  28:07 

Mark, can I just ask you one more question because I know a little over time, but how do you recommend for your personal branding clients that they use video?

 Mark Hodgson  28:15 

Now video is is it's the most engaging what is the most we're being honest and authentic, then videos, probably the most, you'll get a much better. If you've never seen me you'll get a much better sense of who I am by watching me articulate in this video that you will if you read something I wrote are going to write quite well. But this is easier and it's faster. It's it's warmer. It's it's much earlier, one thing that a lot of people get is it's really highly productive. So I was sharing before I had to make a video. A dear friend of mine caught by mine passed away just before Christmas and I wanted to write a piece about him or celebrate him and I cheat the way I did. I thought in the right mood. I went to a local headline and I just use a smartphone iPhone shot a little five, six minute video that captured 95% of what I wanted to say. It was easy. It was heartfelt it was from the heart. It wasn't perfect. It needs to be perfect. It was it was really bloody good communication and it was done. It took me 15 minutes, if I'd sat to, if I had sat down to write that, I reckon that's two or three hours of writing. So I didn't, I didn't, you know, 15 minutes, I posted up deleting all done, and there's no editing just raw. And it's powerful because of that, in 15 minutes, what would have taken me two or three hours to write?

29:37 So it's very, very powerful. And I think the more we do it, the more you're the more natural we get. And one of the things people ask me is, how do you how do you get started, and one of the best tips, I got this young man, one of my friends is an expert. And they said, don't make one video, make 10. Because the first one or two, you sit there going on my nose over the light of the new stuff, but by the time you're making three, or four, or five, or six, you've got over all that, and you actually start to relax a bit. You don't actually say, Oh, these aren't so bad. And you get used to it, and you press them, you post a few people say nice things. And so that's cool. And you're in the game. And then you realize, actually, it's not a big thing.

30:12 It's not about becoming a Hollywood producer, or creating excellence of videos, it's about showing up as who you really are. And I think you know, in picking up on that thing, showing up as you really are probably videos, the best way to do that, to sharpen really are to capture your essence, capture what you're on about capture what you're passionate about your intent you're knowledgeable about, communicate that in a way that connects with people. And you're off to the races. So it's a great thing.

30:38 And the last thing I'll say is the especially on LinkedIn, or LinkedIn is still it's still got that kind of stuff in this thing going on a Facebook kind of yarn and Instagram and picked up at Facebook, LinkedIn is still got that kind of blue, I'm gonna wear a shirt for LinkedIn thing going on. And I know they're trying to get the track. They're trying too hard to get rid of that fact that I went to the cinema the other day, and I have all these LinkedIn ads, the cool kids are trying to make it cooler. But video is still massively underutilized on LinkedIn. So if you're doing LinkedIn, which is obviously the predominant personal, sorry, social media platforms, for professionals, you absolutely need to be playing there as the first port of call for many of us. But if you do video on LinkedIn, you're lucky one in 1000 to do that. So it's a great way of standing out. It's getting better to do getting better now. And yet, it's fast and it's productive. Have some fun.  Go for it.

Chris Schwager 31:27

Mark, thank you so much for your time, I know that we've run a little bit over and you said you want to go to quarter two. So what we might do is wrap it there. And just want to say thank you so much for this session in clarifying personal versus company branding. I think it's been really great for our audience.

Mark Hodgson 31:46

Super welcome. I really enjoy speaking you guys. Thank you.

Chris Schwager  31:50

Now that you know the perks of having personal branding for your business, it's time to take the spotlight and develop your personal brand using videos. Thanks for tuning in. That's all for this episode of the Video Made Simple podcast and see you next week.

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