Build A Personal Brand On LinkedIn For Fun And PROFIT – Get Clients & Grow

Build A Personal Brand On LinkedIn For Fun And PROFIT – Get Clients & Grow

Gary hosts a LinkedIn Live on building a personal brand on LinkedIn with Hannah Szabo (Head of Operations, Digital Brand Kit). Hannah explains her growth came as a side effect of thoughtful engagement rather than optimizing for metrics, warning that chasing follower counts can undermine quality and long-term monetization. She recommends sourcing content ideas by interviewing current customers, transcribing conversations, and using their exact language to address real problems; if starting from zero, test and iterate while learning from niche leaders’ communities. They discuss lurkers and “dark social,” noting many buyers don’t publicly engage but still consume content, which can speed up outbound sales cycles by building trust. Hannah stresses brands are defined by audience perception and advocates aligning personality, audience, offer, and visual identity, and shares how she earned a LinkedIn badge by contributing to LinkedIn articles. She directs viewers to her brand personality quiz via her profile.

Discover:

00:00 Welcome and Setup
03:00 Meet Hannah Szabo
04:20 Real Personal Branding
08:20 Attracting Right Audience
10:33 Content Ideas from Clients
15:43 Monetizing Social Capital
18:06 Turning Content into Clients
23:12 Interview Logistics and Lurkers
24:35 Lurkers Buy Quietly
25:43 Dark Social Explained
27:54 Content Speeds Sales
30:36 Your Brand Is Others
32:48 Visual Identity Strategy
36:20 Personality Without Losing Credibility
38:44 Three Words Brand Test
43:24 LinkedIn Badge Secrets
47:53 Quiz Offer And Q&A
52:14 Final Wrap Up

Transcript:

[00:00:02] Gary Ruplinger: All right. Welcome everybody. To build a personal brand on LinkedIn for fun and profit. we are just a couple minutes out from starting. It’s, currently 1 58 on my, my, clock here today. So we’re starting at two o’clock. If you’ve been here before, you know how I like to start on time. But in the meantime, I have Hannah Szabo with us.

I’ll be introducing her, her here. Shortly, but, in the meantime, where’s everybody calling in from? For me, it is a, it’s actually a sunny November day here in Detroit, Michigan, which, always nice to see the sun in the winter, you know? But, Hannah, how’s the weather by you? I think it’s summer by you, right?

[00:00:42] Hannah Szabo: I think you’re right. It’s 102 degrees outside, hence 

[00:00:45] Gary Ruplinger: the tank top. Oh my goodness. Geez. 

[00:00:49] Hannah Szabo: So I’m like sending sunshine your way, like knitting it through your screen. 

[00:00:53] Gary Ruplinger: I, I, I will take my 54 degrees and be happy with it, man. Hundred. 

[00:00:57] Hannah Szabo: But you know, I grew up in Wisconsin, so I’m kind of your neighbor and yeah, I will take any sunshine that we get in the winter.

Otherwise it’s drab. 

[00:01:06] Gary Ruplinger: That’s, that’s, I grew up in Wisconsin as as well. Where’d you grow up? 

[00:01:10] Hannah Szabo: Oh, no kidding. Appleton. 

[00:01:12] Gary Ruplinger: Okay. I grew up near Fond Lac, so 

[00:01:14] Hannah Szabo: Oh, we’re, yeah, it’s like in the backyard. We drive through it almost every weekend. Going to my grandma’s Milwaukee. 

[00:01:22] Gary Ruplinger: Yep. That’s somebody from Chicago. Another, another Mid-Westerner joining us today.

[00:01:28] Hannah Szabo: Always sunny. Love it. I do miss the Midwest. There’s that Midwest charm, the Midwest. Nice. The, the Hey Yas. 

[00:01:39] Gary Ruplinger: And you are, you’re in Brazil now, 

[00:01:42] Hannah Szabo: correct? Yes, here in Brazil. I, long story short, married a Brazilian 

[00:01:48] Gary Ruplinger: well. Fantastic. 

[00:01:52] Hannah Szabo: All 

[00:01:52] Gary Ruplinger: right. We got just about give it another, we’ll call it another 30 seconds or so, and then we’ll get started.

Kenton from Washington, DC thanks for joining us today. Glad to have you. And just checking, making sure all the. Everything is running. Looks good over here on this screen, so, alright. 

[00:02:15] Hannah Szabo: Oh, we’ve got someone from Portland and Florida where it’s raining. 

[00:02:21] Gary Ruplinger: I hear you guys are supposed to get a lot of rain in Florida today.

I was watching watching YouTube videos earlier today and they said it’s gonna rain in Florida, so, That’s all. That’s all. What type 

[00:02:30] Hannah Szabo: of YouTube videos tell you about the weather? 

[00:02:32] Gary Ruplinger: The weatherman guy. It’s Ryan Hall. He’s like the big weather guy on, on YouTube. Well, he doesn’t keep your so you probably wouldn’t watch him 

[00:02:44] Hannah Szabo: out of my zone.

My goodness. Always 

learning. 

[00:02:50] Gary Ruplinger: alright. Michael from Los Angeles. Welcome. Glad to have you here today. Alright, so it is, it is two o’clock, so let’s. Let’s get 

[00:02:59] Gary Ruplinger: started. So welcome everybody to build a personal brand on LinkedIn for fun and profit, I am Gary Ruplinger. I’m the founder of Pipelineology, and I am excited to have Hannah Zebo, the head of operations at Digital Brand Kit joining us today.

Hannah, welcome. 

[00:03:17] Hannah Szabo: Thank you, Gary. 

[00:03:20] Gary Ruplinger: So I guess for anybody who’s not familiar with you, maybe, maybe they, maybe they live, you know, in a, in a, you know, kind of underground somewhere and they don’t venture out under LinkedIn very often, so they haven’t heard of you. So for those people, can you tell us just a little bit about yourself, kind of how your, your story and what you do, and we can go from there.

[00:03:40] Hannah Szabo: Sure. So, Gary, I’ll actually start with how we got connected. I think you must have heard about me through a couple months ago, one of my LinkedIn friends. Did a huge carousel about me, about my comments and how I leave great comments, you know, how, and then almost picking apart reverse engineering, how I make comments to grow my brand.

And somewhere through that, that post went semi viral. We got connected and I started talking about, how to, how to make better comments to grow your brand. And through that process you reached out and, you know, asked, you were asking a little bit about. 

[00:04:19] Hannah Szabo: This whole thing. And it got me thinking because when you’re wanting to build a personal brand on LinkedIn, you see a lot of scammy kind of sleazy tactics out there.

And when people kept asking me about like, how do you leave great comments? How do you leave great comments, I, I realized the, that was never what I was optimizing for. When I started really getting intentional, let’s call it with my LinkedIn, I think a lot of us have been on LinkedIn, we’ve been lurking, or we’ve kind of let our profile collect some cobwebs.

You know, it’s in, it’s there, kind of embarrassed about it. Don’t look, you know, here’s my WhatsApp instead sort of thing. And so when I really started getting intentional with LinkedIn. I was just curious. I wasn’t trying to build my personal brand or grow my reach or get, you know, clients or anything like that.

That was simply the side effect of engaging thoughtfully with comments. And so, when you, you know, when people started including yourself or asking about like, how do you leave great comments and I really struggled with the question, like I said, ’cause that’s not what I was optimizing for. and it got me thinking bigger about how do you.

How do you build a brand on LinkedIn with that? Yes. Is effective. I mean, we live in a capitalist society. We, we need money, we need to buy, you know, we all need to eat and pay our rent. but how can you do it in a way that’s genuine that you become kind of like a magnet for your clients? 

[00:05:51] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha.

Mm-hmm. Well, I guess that’s probably kind of leads into this. Personal branding and kind of how, how we really, how would you really define kind of the, the personal branding aspect of, of LinkedIn? ’cause I know, like you said, there’s, there’s a lot of scammy, you know, kind of, there’s a lot of scammy ways that, that people try to pitch it.

So how. And you do it very differently. So 

[00:06:18] Hannah Szabo: yeah. Yeah. There are a little, scammy, kind of sleazy, get rich crick ways that you’ll see, and I’m not here to tear up or, you know, you know, throw shade on those people if that’s working for you. And if you’re getting sustainable revenue from that, that is great.

You can go and run with that. My approach is a little bit different. It’s, and Gary, I hope you don’t hate me for saying this, but it’s. You can improve. Even if you don’t measure it, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t measure it, but, that because are you familiar with, what is it? Good heart’s law. Like tyranny of the metrics.

When you start, when you make your metric, you’re North Star and your building, that’s great, but you start optimizing for that and then you focus so much on that one star, that one metric growing your follows that you don’t take into account all the other. Pieces that matter. For example, let’s say you’re growing your brand on LinkedIn and you’re like, I need to get to 10 K followers.

10 K. That’s a great number. Okay, well, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna start being sleazy about it to increase your connections. Those connections aren’t gonna be quality engagements, And so your posts are always going to flop and you know you’re not. You’re not going to be building a sustainable brand that you can actually convert and monetize on the back end later.

that’s an example of, you know, when the target becomes a measure, it ceases to become a good measure. Right. The good. And so my approach is a bit different. It’s, it’s really taking the, you don’t have to measure it per se. You don’t have to keep optimizing for that, but just the co consistency part of showing up.

Writing good content, engaging credibly, using your critical thinking toolbox to open conversations and start, start dialogue with people.

[00:08:18] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. Yeah, so I 

[00:08:19] Gary Ruplinger: like that. So one of the things I know we kind of talked a little bit before here is attracting kind of the right people with it. And I think that I, I, I can tell you personally, that’s been a challenge for us as to. If we’re using content, how do we use it to bring in the right people versus the, the vanity metrics of get in front of as many eyeballs and anything like that.

So could you tell us kind of your approach to kind of attracting the right people when you’re doing this? 

[00:08:50] Hannah Szabo: Yeah. Well, let’s make this helpful. I wanna ask you, what was your approach? What has your approach been? Let’s dissect it. Let’s, 

[00:08:58] Gary Ruplinger: let’s, okay, so we, first and foremost, we do outreach, so, mm-hmm. everything else is kind of plays second fiddle to that.

’cause that’s kind of our, that is our bread and butter is the, the outreach, the getting, you know, messaging other people and turning them into to meetings. That’s what we do internally. That’s what we do for our clients. So kind of the content side of things is not as big of a focus for us most of the time.

It’s the thing that. I, you know, I tell, I tell people this all the time on calls is that, you know, our job as business development people is when you get busy is we’re making sure that that stuff that easily gets pushed off to the side. Doesn’t somebody is there taking care of it for you? And I’ll tell you that.

Internally, it kind of flips on that, is that the content and creating posts and carousels and, and video content is the thing that gets pushed off to the side. ’cause we are, we’re busy on other things. So, pretty much my approach is, I’ll repurpose a lot of the content we do like, for our LinkedIn live events.

I’ll take video clips and stuff like that. Stuff that is relatively easy and not terribly time consuming. And I’ll repurpose that and use that. That is our content approach. It is, pretty simple, I guess, and not very consistent. That’s probably the other thing. It’s very intermittent. Sometimes it’s two or three times a week.

Other times I’ll skip two or three weeks, so. 

[00:10:32] Hannah Szabo: Interesting. Well, you know what, I like what you said. It’s simple, and this doesn’t have to be complicated, but how do you know what to say in your content? Okay, so net new, you’re sitting down to write. I mean, let’s just, let’s dig into it. You’re going down to write, you know, think of content.

How do you know what to say? Where do you source that inspiration from? 

[00:10:53] Gary Ruplinger: well, off to my left hand side here, I’ve got a bunch of little sticky notes. I, I can’t quite turn the camera to that angle or I’d show you, but, essentially, you know, it’s, it’s just different ideas that get jotted down and I just put ’em up there for.

When I need inspiration. Like I’ve got, one here that says that you are, you are not a Snickers bar. IE you’re not an impulse bite at the store. That was, that was because it was Halloween, right? And you had the little candy bar and I was like, so inspiration stuck. So I threw it up there. But, in a lot of cases we, you know, that’s, that’s generally where I turn to is something that throughout the weeks, you know, something gets come up with and I throw it up on my little board here, off to my, off to my left.

[00:11:38] Hannah Szabo: Oh my gosh. Well, I love that Snickers bar. You’re not false. False. because that’s really key. Okay. So it’s not just it, it is hilarious. I love that. But you also know what your offer is and what your offer isn’t. And you know that why, because you’re intimate with your product, what you serve and, and how you serve.

And you’ve probably had enough, you’ve probably put enough customers through, you know, through your system, through this, that you know them. Okay, so that now we’re backing up your customers, right? And the people that you serve, your audience. How do you know what to say? How do you know what to create?

Don’t, don’t get over. Don’t overcomplicate here. Overcomplicate it here. I’m going to assume for the sake of this conversation that most people here know. Right. I’m not gonna start from like square one. Let’s assume that everyone here has an offer, a product, or a service or a business that they can monetize their personal brand through.

Okay? Let’s assume for the sake of this conversation that they, they at least have a sample or a few customers that have had massive success with their product and service. My approach, again, don’t overcomplicate it. Go to them. Have conversations with them. Do interviews, you know, do, do interviews. If you need to do a little quid pro quo, offer ’em a free 30 minute.

Audit or a 30 minute coaching call or something in exchange for a conversation. Transcribe that conversation, take it apart, you know, put it through, oh, make a word cloud out of it so you can visually see what words do they keep saying and create content around that. ’cause those are gonna be the, around those problems that solve those problem, around.

You know the questions that they have and answers to those problems because that’s how you become a, a magnet, literally a magnet for the audience that you want to build. Now, assuming that you have clients and customers and they aren’t your ideal. You’re, that’s not where you want to go. If you’re thinking future term, maybe present tense, you’re like, actually, I don’t really like serving this audience.

I don’t really like my customers here. I wanna pivot myself. I wanna be more high ticket. I wanna, I wanna talk more to this audience to monetize in this way. Well then if you, if you keep going to your current audience for ideas, for content to grow, that you, you’re gonna be stuck. You’re gonna. You’re gonna keep talking in, in circles, and that’s not going to get you to grow you to where you want to go.

Would you say that, you know, most people listening here are, are indeed, coming from a background where they have a company and they, you know, they have offers and services to monetize their bandwidth? Or would you, would you say most people are starting from square one? 

[00:14:36] Gary Ruplinger: I would say, I mean, I guess, the audience can tell us, I think in, in most cases when I’ve looked at the ME metrics, and they were pretty similar when I looked at ’em, for this particular event, that we’ve got a lot of people in the consulting space that are experienced at what they do.

They’re, they’re established in their career. but, I guess, you know, you, you people, out in the comments, it’s, it’s really good to have everybody here. By the way, I’m, I’m, I always love to kind of. See all the comments as they come in. If you do have questions for Hannah, throw them in there and we’ll be kind of throwing them in as, as we go along.

So, anytime you guys have questions about stuff, we wanna hear from you too. This is really all for everybody here. so I’m hoping you get something valuable out of it today. So, yeah, let us know. Are you, are you, I’m, I’m, I’m under the assumption that you are probably a bit more established, in your career at this point if you’re listening to this.

If you’re not. And you, you, you have questions that would be more towards the beginner, let us know and we can kind of try and shift some gears here, there as well. But, 

[00:15:41] Hannah Szabo: mm-hmm. 

[00:15:42] Gary Ruplinger: Anyway, 

[00:15:42] Hannah Szabo: right? Because it, you know, it goes back to again, I, yes. My approach is, okay, so we have someone starting from square one.

Yeah. You know, let, let’s be social. Let’s use social media to be social. there is such thing as social capital, which, which matters and it. It doesn’t, you can exchange it for financial capital. e eventually IE convert those people to paying customers. but for, Y you know, as I said, my approach to building a personal brand is building up a bank full of social capital.

And that means giving back, serving, you know, being genuine. but at the same time too, acknowledging that look at where we’re living. Somehow you need to monetize your personal rent unless you have someone bankrolling you and you, you know, you don’t have any bills to pay. This is just a fluffy side project.

Great. Awesome. Keep, you know, hustling into your, you know, passion side projects that you don’t need to monetize, but think critically about how, if this is my personal brand, how am I going to monetize it? There are various streams that you can monetize, that you can monetize it in the backend by converting, being like the number one ambassador for your company and sending those leads back into your company.

You can monetize it through various different revenue streams such as. You know, paid speaking events or, going on giving, like I said, keynotes or launching a book or advertisements. Maybe you build up a huge podcast and then you can start attracting ads. Affiliate, affiliate sources, paid news, newsletter subscribers.

there are so many different channels that you can do to monetize your brand. That you can use to monetize your brand. It doesn’t just have to be through your company. So really think about how you’re going to monetize it, and then who’s gonna actually be paying for your customers. I see someone saying, on LinkedIn and come to that and translate to clients.

Okay. I’ll take Matthew’s question. Can I, can I take it? Gary, are you? 

[00:17:48] Gary Ruplinger: Yeah. Go for it. Matthew OO Fish There. Yeah, tell us, tell us about conversations on LinkedIn and content that can translate into clients. That’s a really good question. Yes. I would love to hear the answer to that too. That’s a good one.

[00:18:04] Hannah Szabo: Yeah. Yeah. And so, well, first of all, I’m gonna, there, if you show up consistently, and if you’re consistently putting up quality content that isn’t clickbaity or scammy, you’re going to be. Automatically creating kinda like a foundation. And there, trust me, there are lurkers, there are so many lurkers on LinkedIn.

Okay, but how do you know what to say, right? Because that’s the, the X factor is, how do you, if, if not for clickbait, you have to be able to say things that are valuable and that people care about. this is the reciprocity principle, right? If you give, give, give your. And not asking, asking, asking.

Certainly you can ask like, Hey, by the way, like I can help you do this. But if you keep giving, that’s in a sense, you are building social capital that you can translate into financial capital, ie. Clients. So Matthew, to your point, do you know who your clients are? Do you know? Do you, are you for certain, you know.

Yeah, this is what they do. This is what they need, this is how I can help them. If not, get clear on that. there’s tons of content on the internet about how to get clear on your ideal customer avatar. I like to take it from a jobs to be done perspective, which is like a, a user story. So what is literally, What is literally the job that your personal brand solves does for these people? What problem does it solve for them? and then if you don’t know what to start talking about to get them into clients, talk to them first. Like I said, you need to get, get inside of their head. If you can open up, a space where you talk to your current clients right now.

And start interviewing them on their different problems, you know, how, how they’re using your product. what those classic case study questions. those conversations are going to be a. Goldmine, a treasure trove of, ideas that will open up so that you can then start picking apart those transcripts that you have with your current clients that are happy with the services that you’re providing.

And you start, use that exact language exactly what they say, exactly what they’re telling you. You don’t need to over complicate this. and start writing. Start writing content that answers those questions. If you don’t have clients right now, or if you’re like, yeah, but I’m starting from scoring one.

I don’t know who I can reach out to. I don’t know who I can reach out to to get these ideas. This is the part where you’re gonna have to test and iterate. You’re gonna have to embrace your startup mentality and just keep testing and iterating with your messages. And this is when you want to kind of keep an eye on those metrics.

and. Yeah, it’s okay. You can make a little dashboard for your personal brand in terms of like, how many impressions does my post get, how many engagements does my post get? and start figuring out, okay, when I say this or when I solve this problem, these are the types of engagements, and the responses that I’m getting.

with the acknowledgement that there’s gonna be tons and tons of workers in there that maybe, aren’t engaging with your content, but they’re seeing you. They’re seeing you and you’re warming up their name, you’re warming up your name for them. Okay? Another thing that I would recommend right now is start finding people in your niche or in your area that you can follow.

Not, yeah, you know, keep an eye on the competition, but you wanna start joining third conversations. So look at the post that. Like, for example, if, if someone is in your niche and they have a strong brand, a strong personal brand on LinkedIn, find their profiles and and just kind of start looking on their comments, what are their people saying?

Maybe they’re not on LinkedIn. Maybe they’re maybe right now, most of your people that you have a visible, you have visibility into are on YouTube. Okay? Go to the YouTube comment sections. Maybe they’re on Instagram. Okay. Go to the Instagram comment section. But, but start there and, and be a huge looker.

Sign up for their newsletters. Okay. Use, use, you know, kind of a dud email and be on their email list and just open up their news list. What are they saying? So that, not, not so that you can repeat this, the same thing, but that, you know, okay, these are kind of the problems they solve, but I maybe have a different way to solve it.

I have that challenger insight. Are you familiar with the Challenger sale, Gary? 

[00:22:45] Gary Ruplinger: No, I’m not. 

[00:22:47] Hannah Szabo: Okay. Eh, I won’t get into it. but you know, it’s, it’s a way to position your, your sales pitch. You know, that you can educate your prospects, and get them to think, ah, I didn’t know that. It sounds very basic. Yes, I know I’m explaining it in a very basic way, but it’s a great book if you read it.

and, Matthew says 

[00:23:11] Hannah Szabo: here. Where would you interview on LinkedIn and then go offline for a discovery call? I already have clients and targets, interview on LinkedIn. like in terms of exactly the platform that you’re going to be hosting these interviews on, I would say get them off, off on like a Zoom call or, or your preferred video conferencing platform.

yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s great if you already have clients in targets. yeah, I would say if that was the question, yeah, if that was the question in terms of like where to interview them, definitely take ’em offline, like a Zoom link or a Google meet or something. 

[00:24:03] Gary Ruplinger: And, one thing I just wanted to, to go back to, I remember you, you never, you never wanna sleep on those, those people lurking.

For example, when we first started, we were very focused on Facebook initially when that’s where my initial clients came from. So we’d be doing kind of the posting thing, and at the same time, there were all these people saying, I’ve got this special software that gets rid of all of the people who don’t engage with your content.

Well, what it did is if they didn’t like your stuff or they didn’t comment or anything on it, those, those are the people that removed. And I actually went back ’cause I was 

[00:24:34] Gary Ruplinger: curious. I looked at all the, the clients we’d gotten, and then I went and looked at all of the engagement. 80% of the clients, the first time they engaged with me, they was a direct message that would never show up.

They never liked my stuff, they never commented on my stuff. They were just lurkers. But those were the people that were buying. And I thought this software would kill my business if I implemented it. But everybody was promoting it, saying that this is what you gotta do because you want that. You want that.

Those vanity metrics. 

[00:25:07] Hannah Szabo: Those vanity metrics. That’s so interesting, Gary, because also too, like it goes back to the thing where, okay, just because you know you can’t measure your lurkers. Really, I mean, you could, but why do we jump through so many hoops to build such extravagant attribution models? you know, it, everyone has a personal philosophy.

We definitely need to be tracking attribution and okay, where do they come in? Where do they, where do they enter our universe? How do they 

[00:25:41] Hannah Szabo: exit? but those lurkers, dark social, are you familiar with the term dark social? 

[00:25:49] Gary Ruplinger: No, I’m not. I’m old. I’m old. You know, I 

[00:25:53] Hannah Szabo: don’t worry. It’s not nefarious. Don’t worry.

It’s not nefarious. it’s, it’s this idea of like, you’re in your Slack channel or your WhatsApp or something and people are sending you links to this blog post, or, oh my gosh, did you see this? A screenshot of someone’s post? There’s no way for you if someone really likes your post, oh my gosh, this is so funny.

Or the Snickers, the Snickers thing. Let’s just say you made that a meme. I know you are a meme, a meme guy. Let’s say you made that a meme and you posted it. Everyone thought it was funny. Someone like takes it, you know, and sends it to their coworker on a Slack channel. How do you track that? You know? 

[00:26:35] Gary Ruplinger: you don’t, 

[00:26:36] Hannah Szabo: you don’t, but eventually they make your way into the, your universe, they start following you.

and that’s why if, if you are tracking attribution for your personal brand, and I know we’re talking about personal brand and now we’re making this about attribution, but it, it does help say, you know, how did you first find out about me and get it from their words instead of like, instead of, giving them almost like a multiple choice.

Options because sometimes they might say, oh, I heard about you from a podcast, but really they heard about you because the first time someone sent them a private message of a meme that you posted once, three months ago. and that’s lost. You’ll never know that. 

[00:27:18] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. I, I understand what it is now. I know.

Now I know the term to use for it. I’m 

[00:27:24] Hannah Szabo: so just know, just know that when you are building your personal brand, and you’re, you, maybe you’re feeling discouraged or people aren’t showing up the way you thought they were. People are watching. and that’s not to scare you in terms of like, oh my gosh, everything has to be perfect because that’s, you know, the eco egocentric bias.

but people are paying attention and, and your consistency of showing up matters. I 

[00:27:51] Hannah Szabo: know. you know, we don’t need to, but it, it also helps speed up the sales cycle too. Like, let’s say you’re doing a cold, I know, I, you do prospecting, Gary, your company is prospecting. And so let’s say you are sending out cold, cold messages, emails to people, thoughtful, well, they’re going to go back and lurk on you pro.

They’re totally gonna stalk you. And what are they gonna see when they do? Mm-hmm. 

[00:28:21] Gary Ruplinger: No, that’s, that’s a really good point. And, you’re, you’re, you’re hitting on why we, why we even do it. ’cause we, we can, I can, we’re good enough now at the prospecting that I don’t need to do anything else to get meetings, but I want all that content there.

I want the podcasts, I want those LinkedIn posts, everything there is to support that. Speeding up of the sales cycle to get that trust. and essentially speed up that rapport phase, so that by the time they get to talk, by the time we’re having the conversation, we’re already in that they know, like, and trust me, now, it’s just a matter of is, is it a fit?

It, we don’t have, have to spend 30 minutes on that call of, well, can, can you prove it should? Let me, you know, let me talk to 12 references and all that kind of, so really the, for us, the content is. I don’t need to bring any direct clients in from it anymore. Which, which is, is great that for us. Yeah.

Because like I said, we do it a little bit backwards, which is why I always like, like to hear from the other, you know, from somebody like you who it can is, is building it, you know, the other way where you’re, you’re people are coming to you because of your content. For me, it’s just a support piece. I I, and that’s all, that’s all it has to do.

[00:29:40] Hannah Szabo: Right. Well, and that, and that’s the beautiful thing. It’s multifunctional. And so a lot of people build a personal brand, like, oh, it’s all about inbound. It’s all about inbound. No, it’s not. it’s actually going to work on the back. It’s going to, increase the velocity of your sales cycle, you know, when you do, if you are doing outbound.

but it’s also gonna make you more, you know, by building that trust and credibility. But then also too, if, if you want to rely on it for inbound leads. You can get that and trust me, it’ll just take a few sales calls when you’re with people and you’re, you know, about to close a deal or a discovery call and they’re just like, oh, I know you because I saw your content.

Content and I totally agree with what you say about here and I really want that for me. And you’ll, that’s it. That’s the value of your personal brand. And so, LinkedIn user, I see, I, I don’t have the name there, but whoever you are, that last question, something I 

[00:30:35] Hannah Szabo: wanna. Yeah. Something I I want to talk about too, when you, your brand, is your brand isn’t for you u unless this is, unless this is your passion project and someone rich is bankrolling you, your brand isn’t for you.

It’s actually your brand is what other people say it is. And so you can say, for example, let’s say you go around and you say, I am a zebra. I’m a zebra, I’m a zebra. Well, no, you’re not like you’re a human. I can, you have brown hair and you wear glasses, right? And so kind of the same thing with your brand.

You can say, I’m this, I’m all that. I’m all that. But if your audience doesn’t perceive you that way. Are you really, because that’s, that goes back to the purpose of your brand and how you’re monetizing it. And so actually this is a very, really a very important question here because there’s the brand, how you perceive it and how you define it.

And then there’s the brand of how your customers see you and how your customers define it. Ideally, they align. When they don’t align, that’s where you start to run into friction points. That’s when you start to think, oh, I don’t know. you know, oh, my brand’s not working for me. there’s no value in my brand.

I’m not monetizing well, I, I just don’t feel confident in who I am. And so when you think about. The energy of the brand that you give off. And I realize this is really amorphous. I realize this topic is kind of, mushy and fluffy and, and we wanna see the data and the hard numbers and the dashboards ’cause that’s what’s, that’s what’s comfortable to us.

But let’s put that aside and go into this discomfort zone of, Dis discomfort zone of what is a brand and how is it made up of? It’s the image that, it’s the image and the perspective that your audience has of you. So how do you create it in a way that aligns with, with them and what they want, as well as something that greases the 

[00:32:47] Hannah Szabo: sale?

And so, full disclosure, I work for a, a company that. Sells branding assets for personal brands. Okay? And one of the biggest things, we’ve branded over a hundred entrepreneurs, tens of thousands of hours in the trenches with these people. And here’s what we see happen time and time again. They build a brand based on their personal preferences.

A visual identity. They wanna do this, they wanna do that. They like this color, that logo, oh, that looks cute. And what happens? They show up, they ride it around town and it’s just not working. It’s not attracting the right clients, it’s not sending the right signals. It’s attracting the wrong clients.

It’s attracting people they don’t like, or worse, it’s not doing it at all. And so they come to us crying like, oh my gosh, ah, it is a mess. I paid thousands of dollars for a personal, custom designer to do this. And I look, you know, it’s just, it doesn’t fit me right. and we start with strategic truth.

And so we help them take your personality, your personality, the audience that you’re talking to, the offer, the transformation that they sell, and align that to a visual identity. And that visual identity is basically the vehicle that they go and ride around that, that they go out and to create their digital, their digital real estate.

and that allows them to show, not only show up confidently, which I, it’s, it’s one of those intangible amazing things. but also attract the people that they need to be attracting. Because, you know, if you are, let’s just say a consultant that helps people with their personal finance example, if you go around with like fluffy pastels, that’s.

Not going to exude the type of confidence that you, that your audience needs to you, that there’s gonna be an energetic mismatch. And if this sounds like it’s pseudoscience and it doesn’t work, trust me. We hear this time and time again from our clients where they show up in the, the wrong visual identity and they’re not attracting the clients they want.

So that’s great if you, but I love pastels, but I love, you know, this flamingos and fancy logos. Well, that’s great, but your brand isn’t for you. Your brand is for your audience. So what do they need? What sort of energy do they expect from you?

[00:35:30] Gary Ruplinger: Well, the, that, that is really an interesting, I’m trying to think of how the best way to say that, but yeah, a mutual identity thing, you know, as you, as you say that, I’m like, yeah, you, you see some that there’s, there’s clearly a mismatch in the way they want to show up with the people they want to work with.

And I, right. And I think sometimes maybe this kind of goes into the next one, right. Too much of their personal stuff gets mixed in with what they want to be known for. I, I see this quite a bit, maybe a little less so on LinkedIn, but on Facebook especially, it’s, you know, I don’t wanna talk about their politics or their religion and stuff.

And it really starts to mess with the people they’re trying to, you can see both, right? You can watch both, and you can see ’em fight with each 

[00:36:19] Gary Ruplinger: other. So I guess, how do you bring personality into it without. Sacrificing what you’re trying to build. 

[00:36:29] Hannah Szabo: Mm-hmm. The credibility aspect. We see this a lot. It’s almost, I think we see this tension play out a lot is because people have issues, myself included, have trouble with nuance.

Where’s that gray space? they’re either 100% cookie cut and professional, or they’re a little zany and. Not, you know, their credibility is lost. And so to, to find, again, it goes back to what does your audience need from you? if you are someone, let’s just say you work in a more, in a space that. Is more confidential.

You need high stakes. I know Google has a name for it, but it’s like if, if it’s like, if it’s like life or death or some sort of very dire, existential space, those sort of industries and niches and verticals, you’re going to need to err on the side of being more professional. if, for example, we work for a branding company, a digital brand kit, and we can afford to, I would say, let our hair down and, and be more open in our communication.

With, with what we say it, it’s through our words, it’s through our visual identity. it’s through every single touch point. So you’re probably thinking Okay. Yeah, I, I get this question a lot and it’s, yeah, but I’m not funny. Yeah. But I don’t know how to put my personality into this. Gary, do you have issues showing your personality on any digital platform that you show up on?

[00:38:21] Gary Ruplinger: Not, not generally. 

[00:38:22] Hannah Szabo: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:24] Gary Ruplinger: Did you ever have that guess back in 2006 when I started doing my first YouTube videos? Yes. but at this point it’s, you know, we’re, I’m far enough into it that I’m fairly comfortable just being myself wherever I am at this point.

[00:38:43] Hannah Szabo: I, I 

[00:38:43] Hannah Szabo: love your energy. So what, let’s just do a little experiment. What are three words you would use to describe your brand? 

[00:38:54] Gary Ruplinger: that’s a great, I didn’t, I didn’t know there was gonna be a quiz today. now the, I used to be an 

[00:39:00] Hannah Szabo: English teacher, 

[00:39:01] Gary Ruplinger: right? Three words that I would use to describe, you know, my brand is, you know, we are innovative, we are reliable, and, we are.

that’s what I’ve got. I got two. 

[00:39:21] Hannah Szabo: Okay. Innovative and reliable. Okay. You used that. You used, we, the pronoun we Are you talking about you or your company? 

[00:39:30] Gary Ruplinger: I guess I’m talking about my company. 

[00:39:32] Hannah Szabo: Okay. Okay. Innovative and reliable. Okay. That’s where I would start. Then I would start, I see welcoming, relaxed, reliable.

Think of three words. That you want to use to describe your personal brand. And if your personal brand, let’s just say as an ambassador, you’re an ambassador for your company brand, like that’s where the lines get a little blurred. We can talk about that later, but figure out, okay, this is my personal brand, not we, me, maybe me monetizes the we, but right now me.

How use three words or five if you like. 5, 4, 6 doesn’t matter. but three is a nice number. Pick three words and figure out what do you wanna be, how do you wanna make people feel when they interact with your content online? Once you can define those, you can basically stress test every piece of content, everything you publish, every time you hit post.

Does this violate any of these values that I have? Am I showing up? Am I exuding confidence? I’ll give you an example. Once I was, I was ghostwriting, prior to where I am now, I got my start actually marketing at a ghostwriting agency. This was like in the, you know, the middle ages before chat, GPT. So we thought we were the, the, the bee’s knees, like, you know, right for thought leaders.

And now, Let’s just say that agency meant commoditized. And so Wew wrote ghost writing articles for, for entrepreneurs, consultants, companies, and I had drafted this email newsletter and one of the first piece of feed, it totally violated it. One of the brand values was uplifting. This person, I’m not, no, no names.

This person’s brand is uplifting. And when we stress test it against this email newsletter that I had written, it was almost kind of like poo-pooing on them, shaving them, almost shaming them for. Being wrong about this one thing. Kind of going back to that challenger sale mindset where I was like, oh, you know, you have to kind of hook them in with this challenger insight that’s gonna make them be like, wow, you’re amazing.

I didn’t know that Hasa Eureka, but I framed it in a way that made them kind of feel awful, and that violated the uplifting, value of it. And so when those clash then, you know. Wrong personality, wrong energetic match, in that content. So yeah, step one would be figure out what are those, what are the words that you want people to think?

How do you want ’em to feel when they experience your brand? Whether that’s watching a video, reading your email newsletter, interacting with you in a live workshop. And then if you can also reference your values. I, blah. It’s kind of a boring word. I get it. But, I do hope that everyone has those values written out and documented.

because if it violates any of those values, that’s when you know, you’re, you’re not showing up in the true integrity of your brand. 

[00:43:03] Gary Ruplinger: Well, I love it. Well, I know on the StreamYard side we don’t get to see all the little live likes and hearts and stuff like that, but I can see ’em over here on my right hand side.

You’re getting a bunch of ’em, so people are, people are digging it. So, 

[00:43:14] Hannah Szabo: oh, 

[00:43:15] Gary Ruplinger: I have, I have two more questions and then we’ll open it up for, for q and a for any, any other questions here. just to kind of switch gears just a 

[00:43:23] Gary Ruplinger: little bit. I saw recently you, got one of the special badges on LinkedIn, the top personal branding, voice badge.

Do you have any insight on, because I, I know like those are things people are going to aspire to get. How, how do I do that? Do you have any insights you can share with people on how you, you managed to pull that off? 

[00:43:47] Hannah Szabo: okay. so secret time. I will let you know here. I was bored one night, and this was a couple weeks ago when I was like, oh, like I can contribute.

I love writing. side note, I went to a liberal arts school, so it. It’s my bread and butter. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so fun. Like I can contribute to these articles. And so one night I just sat down and how do you get a badge? Okay, that’s the question. You contribute enough to these contributed articles that LinkedIn is pushing and, and you do enough of them and then they’re like, they crown you this badge.

And so I did that and that’s how they, that’s how you get the badge. and it was, it was quite easy for me because LinkedIn literally prompts you like, here, like, contribute to this article, contribute, keep doing, doing more. They gamify it. It’s a little psychology. So just like, look at how LinkedIn, LinkedIn 1 0 1, they make money when you stay on the platform, okay?

You stay on the platform because it’s working for you. Or because you have FOMO and you wanna, you wanna keep showing up or because you’re racing really hard ’cause you wanna keep getting these badges. And so, you know, the engineers behind all of this are stunningly brilliant. They came up with this idea where they’re just like, if we can get people to contribute to these articles, we don’t, we’re not going to fact check them.

We’re just gonna do that. We’re gonna basically get them to make content for more content for us. We’re gonna reward them for it. So they’re gonna get a little burst of I, it is dopamine, but it’s also many other neuro cocktail neurochemicals. And so they’re gonna wanna keep showing up and then they’re gonna get competitive about it.

And so yeah, secrets out. I just like. One day, one night sat down and wrote a bunch of that stuff because I enjoy it. but now we’re starting to see this again where it’s that tyranny of the metrics. Now everyone wants a badge. Everyone’s like, oh, oh, I want a top badge and I wanna be cool like that. But, and And so I would just, if you want my opinion, you didn’t ask.

I think now it’s become a little bit, of child’s play in a sense. where, because. Sure. Maybe I’m throwing myself under the bus. I don’t care. I don’t have anything to lose. But none of these articles are fact-check. I, I am very concerned actually, because now people, some of the, some of the, the responses that I get that I see people contributing to these articles are laughable.

Like even like judge g, pt, judge, GPT could do better and they’re getting like. Exposure. And so it is concerning for me to see, from a platform, you know, an accuracy perspective, what LinkedIn is doing to get us to stay engaged on the platform. that said, I have a badge and I’m not going to keep going and pushing for more.

Do you have any Yeah, I Did you? No. 

[00:47:00] Gary Ruplinger: You make any articles? No. I was legitimately curious how, How it, how it came to be because, you know, you’re, you can, you’ve got a fast growing network and I’m always kind of curious how these, which, what, what the rising people are doing now to, to come up. So 

[00:47:14] Hannah Szabo: you, you just, you just contribute to one of their articles where you have expertise, they, and they will invite you to some of ’em.

And, I, I do, I personally think it’s gotten out of hand.

[00:47:28] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. Well, thank, thank you. Anyway, but, my last question and then we will open up for q and a. So if you have any questions for Hannah, now is the time to post ’em as there’s about a 20 to 32nd delay from when I just said that to when I actually see your answers. So well, Hannah’s answering this last question, please get your questions in the, in the chat there, and we’ll, we’ll go through ’em here.

We’ve got at least 15 minutes left. Then, we’ll then we’ll call it a wrap 

[00:47:52] Gary Ruplinger: here. But Anna, for somebody who wants to go a little bit deeper on this personal branding and visual identity journey, how should they get in touch with you? What’s the best way to, to kind of, what’s that next step? 

[00:48:05] Hannah Szabo: So we have something special, something super sweet.

it’s a brand personality quiz, and this is what I was talking about earlier where the biggest mistake people make, we see it over again is as they fall in the same hole, is they wanna start building their personal brand and. And their visual identity. and they do it based on personal preference and not on what the strategic truths about how to build a brand correctly.

And so if you wanna learn more about, if you want the tools and the resources you need to launch your brand with confidence, literally overnight, we have, in the link, my profile has a brand personality quiz. It’s a little fun. and really five minutes to fill out. What it’s gonna do is it’s gonna take.

Your personality, your offer, and your audience, and match that to a visual design style that’s going to speak to your audience, to show them your offer. And that represents your personality. We like to say it represents your vibe and attracts your tribe. so you can go ahead and take that quiz and, and that’s, that’s step one.

That’s enough of a 

[00:49:15] Gary Ruplinger: great, and you said just go to your profile for that. 

[00:49:18] Hannah Szabo: Yep, that’s right in the link in my profile. And we do have something really special and really sweet. I, unfortunately it’s, it’s, I can’t tell you about it, but, coming up that we’re launching on Black Friday and, all that to say, I saw the proof of concepts yesterday and just melted into a puddle.

That’s how in love I am with them. 

[00:49:41] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. So they have, they have a week to get into your, get into your world so they can see what you got coming up for Black Friday then? 

[00:49:46] Hannah Szabo: Yes, yes, yes. No scammy sales tactics. Don’t worry, you won’t be hit with like neon flashing countdown timers. 

[00:49:55] Gary Ruplinger: Gotcha. Alright, so I do see one more question here and I’ll see if many others come in, but, Question. Hannah, how do I reach people to invest, partner in real estate with relevant articles daily sharing when I lack real, real estate investment versatility. and they’re also retired military narcotics. Interesting. 

[00:50:19] Hannah Szabo: Okay, so, 

[00:50:22] Gary Ruplinger: I can up if you need to see the question again. 

[00:50:24] Hannah Szabo: Mm-hmm. Thank you. I would question your relevant articles daily.

why do you, why, why do you think you need relevant articles daily? Exactly. in terms of, reaching these people, and that, so that’s step one. You know, don’t overcomplicate it. number two is you said people to invest, partner to invest and partner in real estate. Do you know who these people are?

Like, can you, if you had to say, oh, you know, potentially it could be X, Y, and z and a, B, d people, like, can you write a list of who these people are? If not, or, or if you can’t identify who that would be, step one. because you don’t know, like if you want to attract people, you need to know who you’re going to be attracting for the purpose.

let’s say that you assume you do. know who they are. Maybe I, I will also challenge like we, maybe LinkedIn isn’t where you’re going to find them. so keep your mind open to, to reaching these people that could in, investment partner with you on different platforms or in private communities, private Facebook communities, private, you know, slack channels, those sort of things.

[00:51:55] Gary Ruplinger: Okay. 

[00:51:57] Hannah Szabo: I think we start from a lot of assumptions. Like it has to be this way, it has to be that way. I have to be doing well. Let me tell you something. There’s no one right way to do a personal brand. there are many ways to do it wrong. but there’s no one right way. 

[00:52:12] Gary Ruplinger: Excellent. Well, Hannah, I think that’s all the questions we’ve got today.

So, I just wanna say thank you so much for hopping on with, with me today. It was great having you. Thank you for sharing your, your insights. for everybody else, check out Hannah, follow her here on, on LinkedIn. Check out the, check out her quiz and see if, see if they can help you with your, your visual identity.

So thank you so much, Hannah. 

[00:52:36] Hannah Szabo: Yes, we’d love to. Thank you, Gary. Bye everyone.