Welcome to Episode 79. We’re talking about personal branding, what it is, what it’s not, and why my guest thinks many people are approaching it in the wrong way. Who better to talk about this topic than the founder of personal branding agency Great Influence, Ash Jones. Ash is the person who started working with Steven Bartlett on his personal brand when he founded his social media agency, Social Chain. Steven has gone on to become one of the most influential voices in entrepreneurship. If this makes you think about your own personal brand, whether you’re an agency owner, or agency account manager, and if you are an agency account manager and you’ve never received any formal training in account management, you might like to read more about my Account Accelerator training here.
Transcript:
Jenny Plant 00:00
Welcome. I’m delighted to have Ash Jones on the show today, Ash is the founder of personal branding agency Great Influence. Prior to that he was one of the founding members of the agency Social Chain, where he helped Steven Bartlett build his personal brand and become one of the most well-known influential thought leaders of our time. Stephen is now a dragon on BBC Dragon’s Den. He’s hosted the most downloaded podcast, The Diary of a CEO and author of Sunday Times bestselling book Happy, Sexy Millionaire. Ash, also as if that wasn’t enough, he also works with other celebrity clients, including entrepreneur, broadcaster and former Manchester and England football player Gary Neville, founder of nutrition company Huel, Julian Hearn, author and journalist Matthew Syed and one of LinkedIn top voices and now MD of Social Chain, Katy Leeson. So, welcome Ash.
Ash 01:03
Pleasure to be chatting to you, as always.
Jenny Plant 01:05
Honestly, that is quite an impressive introduction. So would you mind by starting and telling us just a couple of minutes on your background and how you ended up working at Social Chain?
Ash 01:20
So, to take it right back, I was unemployed. I was on Jobseeker’s Allowance at 23/24 for a couple of years. And then decided, after a promise I made to my mum to sort myself out, I decided to go study marketing, because I’m a Man City fan and I saw a behind the scenes video that they posted online about the social media team. And I thought I’d love to do that. So then I went and studied marketing did that for a couple years. Whilst I was studying marketing, I was looking around to try find something to do alongside studying and that’s how I met Steven Bartlett, he was 18 and he had just dropped out of university. So it was very fortunate timing, and then started working with him on his first startup, which was called Wallpark with him and Dom McGregor at the time, who’s co-founder of Social Chain with Steve. And then everything snowballed from there, I went into Social Chain and, wild ride.
Jenny Plant 02:32
Wow, just a quick note, it’s a bit detailed, but when you said you studied marketing, was that the Chartered Institute of Marketing? Or was there any other?
Ash 02:41
Yes, I did. I did the Chartered Institute of Marketing course first, and then I did a two year or one year foundation degree, one or two years foundation degree because I couldn’t get into- I didn’t have a qualified- I only had one GCSE and no A Levels. So I did the Chartered Institute of Marketing, first then a foundation degree and then into university proper.
Jenny Plant 03:07
Interesting, just before I jump into what it was like working with Steven and building his brand, do you think for marketers in general, that work in agencies, not everybody has received kind of formal training? Do you think it is valuable to do some kind of training in marketing,
Ash 03:30
I don’t think I’m qualified to say because I was at the age where I did all that studying, and it all went in one ear and out the other. So if I did it now I’d have a different approach to it, and maybe it would be, but at the same time, I was working with Steve at Wallpark, and then into Social Chain, and what I was seeing and learning there versus what I was learning at the same time in lectures was immense. One was immensely engaging, and was in a world where I could apply the understanding, whilst I was trying to learn knowledge about it for the first time. So I’m trying to learn about marketing for the first time, and I’m in a world at Wallpark, Social Chain, with the people doing things where I can apply it to something that makes sense to me, which is social media, whereas marketing when I was studying it I remember having to do an essay on Tesco’s venture into America and how that panned out and I can’t relate the foundational understanding that the lectures were trying and essays were trying to give me through the example that they were built on. So I think I’m not best placed to say, if I went back now maybe so, but it’s also very rare that a student is going to, at the same time as studying, go through something like Social Chain. So I was a very, very rare case of a student.
Jenny Plant 03:34
So you actually started with Stephen in Wallpark. So talk me through the transition from it to becoming Social Chain. So what happened? Why did it change? How big was it when you were Wallpark and what happened to shift it to Social Chain?
Ash 05:31
Um, so Wallpark was an online notice board for students. That was the concept, Stephen was at university and dropped out but when he went, he noticed that, the physical noticeboard in the university, things like, “oh, we need a player from five-a- side” and it would go on the noticeboard and he just thought why is it physical? Why was it not online? So that was the idea. And the idea was to build a student community and then have brands advertise on the website and the way that Steve had thought to market it was that everything was trying to be honest, in terms of, how would you market this website to students? It was like, I’ve got pictures of Wallpark flyers and things like that. So we tried it all the traditional ways but then social media just- it worked. And then it became a mission of this social media thing, which at the time was Facebook works for helping us get people on to wallpark.com. So how do we do that? And then, we sort of went on this mission, which was about, where Dom McGregor kind of came in and played, this huge role of being this guy who just was unbelievable at building these on-line student communities and groups. And we use those communities and groups on social to drive them to wallpark.com. And then we were going to bring brands into wallpark.com. Then Steve, thought about, why have I got this thing in the middle of wallpark.com, when we’ve got the students over here on social, on these big pages that we own, and communities and groups that we own? And then we’ve got brands over here? Why don’t we just take out this bit and join them together, and then that became Social Chain.
Jenny Plant 07:32
Wow. What was it like working with Steven?
Ash 07:40
You can imagine, now, I’m good at what I do, and have the belief that I’m good at what I do, purely by osmosis, of learning from him even now, literally to this day, still learning from him, directly, indirectly, when we speak, when I watch what he does with, what he’s doing with his companies and his own brand. Yes, it’s incredible. And even at 18, you could just tell there was a way of thinking there that stood out in a room of people.
Jenny Plant 08:22
Can you be more specific about maybe two or three things that really were a shift for you, you know, with his way of thinking?
Ash 08:34
I’m always trying to do something that would stand out, find a point of differentiation versus what everybody else is doing. And I’m thinking back to the very, very earliest things that he did within Wallpark and it was always trying to find something that stood out but worked and that drove results. So it wasn’t just about the standing out thing, you know, you could do stunts and things like that and that can help you stand out but it’s what stunt drives results was the thing, early Wallpark, so that and then his ability to bring people on a journey of something so that I think of how the early people around Wallpark all behaved and it was like he had this natural ability and leadership to bring people on a journey and make them believe. We thought Wallpark was the single greatest mission that we were ever going to be on in our lives honest. And that’s something that you make people feel. And then just, pure work ethic, unbelievable work ethic, and probably an understated one that wasn’t a business thing, but has underpinned everything that he’s been about is generosity. I remember one of the earliest things was I couldn’t afford to get the bus. And we got on the bus, and he paid for me to get on the bus. And I didn’t know this, but he couldn’t afford the bus either! So I’d say those four things if I go way, way, way back to that start.
Jenny Plant 10:29
I’m sure there’s people listening, particularly agency owners, that almost want to bottle up what you just said, and drink from it, making the team feel and get behind you on the same mission. What was his magic formula for doing that?
Ash 10:51
You can’t become it, you can’t train it. It’s just a thing. We work with a client of ours John Amaechi. He runs a business called APS Intelligence or APS Intel, he used to be a basketball player in the NBA. He’s now a psychologist. I listened to him speak and he just has a way with words that I don’t see with anyone else. It’s so rare, the way with words that he has. And Steve has got a way with words and a way of articulating himself. And those two things combined, if your use of language and your use of articulation are at a very high level, then you’re always going to stand out, I think. And that’s definitely something that Steve still has now. You watch him on Dragon’s Den, how he speaks and articulates himself it’s very compelling and engaging and draws people in.
Jenny Plant 11:57
You know, that’s really interesting that you say that, I think it’s very useful for people to hear that from you, particularly leaders that want to emulate that. But interestingly, on your website, there’s a video of Steven talking about what is personal branding, and why it’s so important. And he actually says,” I have become a better communicator through sharing my personal brand. It has taken years of practice, but now I feel so much more confident. But it’s through practice”. So actually, I think there’s quite an inspiring message there for anyone listening that is trying to lead a team. And maybe that’s a compelling reason to do personal branding.
Ash 12:41
He said that before on his podcast about how the great thing about doing the podcast, that it’s a commitment to sharpen his sword in terms of articulating himself and also being on camera, in a world where everything is going digital and video that to be comfortable on camera is a really valuable skill, and the knock on effect of doing that within business. If you are able to articulate yourself better, because you’re writing down your ideas to turn them into content to use for your own LinkedIn, you then take that skill of trying to take a thought, articulate it to yourself, turn it into an idea that engages an audience, you take that into business, into a pitch into the client meetings, all these things. So he is living proof of that where the first video that we ever tried to film in 2015, maybe, it took him six hours to do a two-minute video because he didn’t have the practice. He was doing it for the first time. Now he can go on a full production set in front of 40 cameras, and he doesn’t need any practice, because he’s done. But that idea of 10,000 hours. You’ve got to do your 10,000 hours. And I found it personally, I couldn’t speak when I first went to Wallpark meetings and Social Team meetings. I couldn’t say a word. And then through watching him, I’m very privileged to firsthand see how Steve did it and built it and things like that. And you learn from that. And then also, just from me, repeating doing it over and over again, and all that kind of thing compared to where I was much, not that I’m a good or great speaker, but I’m much better than I was before. And it’s literally just down to practice and putting yourself out there and doing it. But the whole personal branding thing, I think it has a very huge knock on effect on everything within business that isn’t probably spoken about enough on the idea of you’re sharpening your ideas, articulation, your language all these things all the time as a result of doing it that then pulls into business in different conversations in different situations.
Jenny Plant 15:11
Let’s talk about personal branding. Because obviously, you decided to start Great Influence. So was that the natural next step for you when you left Social Chain?
Ash 15:25
I don’t think I knew it at the time, but it had to be, there was no other. I think my thing was, I didn’t think that you could do it for anybody. I thought you needed a Steven Bartlett to be able to do personal branding. So the idea of me going out and helping somebody else do it was Well, I have never met anyone like him. So it’s going to be hard for me to meet another one again, and do it. And the whole, four or five years of doing this now is proving myself wrong on that aspect. That personal branding, looks and sounds and feels and, you know, executes in different ways for different people. So I think I wasn’t sure when I left Social Team, but then within a month, I started going in that direction. From my own point of view, I don’t think I understood the amount of valuable knowledge that I had gained. And because to you, it’s normalised. So I have been in that whole setting for five, six years, and the learning environment and all those things. And it’s normalised, and you don’t quite realise that the thinking that you have attained from an experience or from a group of people or from an individual is heavily advanced in comparison with 95% of the industry. And I don’t think I realised that until way into this Great Influence journey and talking to people and ascertaining where their knowledge was in relation to what I knew. And then you see what people do as well. And even now, I’d see what 95% of people are doing when it comes to personal branding, and I feel I am thinking that it is so not anywhere near as advanced as it where it can go- so then you’re right, okay, yes, it’s a no brainer for me to be in this space. Because it would be a shame. I don’t know anything about anything else to the degree that I do about this as a result of experiences that I’ve had and in the people that I have learned from.
Jenny Plant 17:42
So I’m fascinated by this. I think everybody is waiting to hear what is the 5%, you know to paint a picture of what 95% of people think that personal branding is, and perhaps give us an insight into what is that 5% what really makes the big difference? And what made you so successful during those five to six years of working with Steven?
Ash 18:12
I don’t think it’s one thing, I think it’s multiple things that end up pulling into the overarching end, right now,
I think something that’s really prevalent that 95% of people are doing, that doesn’t make sense is trying to be an influencer. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs and founders and CEOs, and even anyone within the career space in business, trying to build a personal brand. But what they are actually doing in the execution is pretending or trying to be an influencer, because they’re putting out content that they know that it’s going to do well. That’s why they’ve posted it, rather than what brand am I trying to build? What direction is this trying to go in? What outcomes is it trying to help me drive. And then what they do on the execution side comes from that. But I can very clearly see that it’s not it’s coming from the other side, which is this ego.
And it makes sense to me when LinkedIn is in its ascension as a platform for people and therefore you’re always going to have something like, fame, ego, influence is starting to build on that platform and people and it’s all up for grabs. And if it’s really easily attainable, which I think it is on a platform like LinkedIn, it then becomes very like the devil on your shoulder. You could post the thing that gets 15 likes that is actually what you want to build a brand in but what you could post is that other thing that gets 900 likes, it is not that old, satisfy your ego and help you build a bit of a following. So I think it’s not just one thing. It’s an accumulation of things over time that are around brand building long term plays. Positioning and how you’re positioning yourself and the perception that people are building and got a view. Social proofing, human psychology, all these different elements that come into it, that I think the 5% that get it right, have a high index of a number of those things that it just clicks in them in some way, shape or form. And I think that the 95% I don’t know, it’s hard to articulate a bit. But there’s so many things that I think it adds up to. But I guess it’s the same in any walk of life. Why are the top 5% of musicians, the top 5%? They wouldn’t say it’s one thing, it’s well, when it comes to songwriting, I can pick at least 10 things that I think I do that the 95% don’t, that means that I write the best songs. And then how I market those songs and how I put an album together and how we do the live show and how we do this and how we do merch, how we do that, and all these things accumulate to mean that that musician is in the top 5%. And again, within business, why the top 5% of entrepreneurs are the top 5%. And they point to not one thing, but multiple things across the major areas that make up the whole pie. See, I think it’s the same thing in personal branding.
Jenny Plant 21:44
When I know you’ve got a bit of a waitlist of people wanting to work with you, but when your clients want to work with you, what do they want to achieve? Can you give us a flavour of the type of people that come? And what they say they want?
Ash 22:02
Do you know what’s funny that they don’t know? They don’t know when you ask them, but they do know, everybody knows what outcomes they are looking for. I find that we have to tease it out by asking the right questions. And a lot of people just don’t know everything. Either they haven’t started to build the personal brand yet and they’re trying to and therefore to figure out what brand they’re trying to build and what the framework around who they are and things like that? Or they’ve started doing it, and they’re actually succeeding heavily in doing it but it’s ad hoc. And there’s no ownership around it. And there’s no structure around it, there’s no strategy or thinking it’s almost a series of fortunate events. So I think, the role that we play is of helping, maybe three-fold – the strategy, initially, that brand strategy, I say, initially, it’s always ongoing and developing, because people are always developing, you know, I’m not the same person I was six months ago, and what matters to my business isn’t the same as it was six months ago. So that branded strategy is always developing. But, a big one is, what are they trying to do? Who are they trying to be? What they’re trying to say? What’s the direction of it? What purpose is it trying to serve? What do they want to achieve in doing it? And then the execution side, very busy people with very little time, but a million ideas and a great voice to build on. Any business leader who is successful in business and successful in their own personal brand cannot do it on their own. If you look at the biggest, they’ve got teams of 20 around them now. So it kind of speaks to , you can’t do this alone. So it’s the strategy and then the execution side, helping them execute to a high degree. And then I’d say a trusted ear, and trusted advice, and you get to know them so deeply because you are working on them and the clients that we work with, I know some of them better than I know my own parents now. Wow. That because you get so used to how they, how they talk, the things that they care about – all of these things. You are learning about them so deeply that you end up building quite unique relationships with them. And they, in my experience, tend to be very trusted relationships. And I think the act of you handing your reputation over to somebody is an immensely precious thing. And then if that person does a good job, you can imagine how you then trust them implicitly. So, I think the role that we play as well as even to their career decisions being pulled in and things like that, at times is a bit of a trusted, as I’m sure they have multiple people around them, who they get advice from, or share things with, just to see what they’re thinking. I think that’s a bit of a role that we play as well.
Jenny Plant 25:51
Would you advise other agency owners to take personal branding more seriously? Because, you know, in our industry, you’ve got Steven, who started at Social Chain, you’ve got Gary Vee, Vaynerchuk, Vayner Media. So it is quite prevalent that we have these personalities, I think back in the day with certain advertising agencies, they used to be the face of their agency. So there are agency owners listening to this. What would your advice be to them?
Ash 26:25
Do you know what was really interesting in that point that you make about that in older advertising, there was always phases of advertising. And I feel people might feel that personal branding is a new thing. It’s not it’s just the term is new. Whereas the actual execution of it has been happening for decades, within marketing and advertising and I think the fact that personal branding and the term and what has happened over the past couple of years, it’s actually put a lot of people off doing it, which therefore, to me, creates an even bigger opportunity for those who ignore that and instead, look at the underlying fundamentals and foundational elements that have been tapped in to for decades. And understand that it’s a very important thing to do in the right way. I think there’s been a lot of hate, or, people just, I don’t know, they see personal branding, and see people doing things for ego, or it’s trying to be an influencer, or it’s just not something that they would do, and those things can get in your periphery and put you off. I feel like there’s two sides to it, where there’s personal branding over here. And there’s personal branding over there and the one over here is what a lot of people are doing and I don’t think it’s good. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do. And it’s almost a different thing entirely. It’s more trying to be liked, and trying to be famous. And then over there, you have the one which is gold dust to businesses, forget to the individual, it’s even more gold dust to the individual in terms of your long term career, but to the business that they’re running, it’s gold dust to them, which is understanding the underlying fundamentals of what this is and how it can help achieve key outcomes that you’ve got, either as an individual or as an individual within a business.
Steve used to say – as you can imagine, a lot of people would say whilst he was at Social Chain, him building his personal brand, Is it a benefit? Is it not? Is it this? is it that? and his argument always was that every single person in Social Chain is helped. As a result, it makes everybody’s job easier. So the recruiter trying to recruit people, their job is 10 times easier. The salesperson trying to get new clients, their job is 10 times easier. The person doing the current management trying to retain the client, their job is 10 times easier. Everybody’s job is 10 times easier as a result of Steven Bartlett going and doing his thing for Social Chain. So you take that and apply it to any business. If you do it in the right way, and with the right intentions, then for a business, it’s a no brainer. And you go back and ask an agency from 40 years ago, whether whoever was the face that did this was a great idea, unequivocally, yes. But that’s kind of got lost in the past five years of personal branding being a trend.
Jenny Plant 29:57
I love that – that’s such a good point. It’s something that is not front and centre for me, it actually does help everyone in the business. Because I’m sure you are a good speaker, I’ve seen you speak on stage. I bet as a result of speaking at some point Ash, someone has come up to you and said,or asked you to work with you, for example, what did you do? You put your message out there, you stood there and you told your story. And actually, it breaks down that barrier. It’s not you going out chasing new business and feeding your pipeline and prospecting to cold leads. I mean, that’s in a very fundamentally, basic terms. But I love that message. And I think that is something. What else can you share about personal branding that perhaps isn’t thought about, because like you say, a lot of people have been put off by it.
Ash 30:50
And you know, what’s really funny, everybody was doing it – agency owners in particular, if you’re an agency founder, you were doing personal branding in the first year, guaranteed. But you didn’t think it was personal branding, because what was every agency founder doing in their first year? trying to go out and get the business off the ground. In my first year, anyone that would let me be on a podcast, anyone that would let me go speak on stage, at any meeting, at all of these things. I was doing them with the hope that they would drive business, I wasn’t even thinking about personal branding. But the outcome was the exact same, I am trying to achieve certain outcomes, and I’m using myself to drive those outcomes. There’s no difference. But in that first year, I was using myself to drive the business outcomes as every agency founder does in the first year, whether there’s 1,2 or 3 of them, they’re all going out and doing their thing, whatever that looks like to drive the business outcomes – them personally. And then they stopped doing that, because the business starts to get established and builds and so they stopped doing those things they did in the first year. I was talking to a founder the other day, not from an agency from a product side. But he was saying that to me, and I was thinking this about a day before the meeting. Completely different, train of thought. And then he said it, he was like, He’s four years in and he’s like, I want to pick up on personal branding now. Because it you know, in the first year, I did PR, and I was speaking and things like that I was just trying to build business. And I was like, there it is, that is just you, it’s the same thing, you’re going back to what you were doing day one, we’re just terming it in a different way and approaching it in a different line. So, but
the whole point of it is to be driving again, is it this kind of personal branding that people see and think it is? Or is it this one that we’re all smart about? We’re just trying to drive key outcomes, and understanding what those key outcomes are. And in the first year, every agency owner did that thing where they use themselves to try drive key outcomes for business. So it’s just going back to that school of thought.
Jenny Plant 33:19
Really, really interesting stuff. Okay, let’s move on as I’m just conscious of your time. I’d love to hear about running Great Influence, It’s very successful. You are I think, almost five years then now?
Ash 33:30
Yeah, yeah.
Jenny Plant 33:33
Can you, for those who are listening and responsible for client management, can you talk to us a little bit about how you manage your client relationships?
Ash 33:43
Like I say, I think we’re very fortunate in that due to the kind of work that we do, we have to get under the skin, so to speak. And they share things with us that they don’t share with a lot of people, you really get an understanding of how they think and where they’ve won, where they’ve lost, where they’ve got things wrong, where they’ve got things, right, all this kind of thing. So I think that’s a very privileged position to be in from a how do you do client management? Because the majority of people won’t get that depth of the client in the line of work that we do. So you might if you work with a client and then running a brand. You might spend some time with the founder, but then it’s the rest of the team, whereas we are just literally one on one all the time. And we’re talking with them near enough every single day. So mega touch points at deep levels at times as well. So and I’d say from client management what I think is important is we have 10 principles within our company culture, and one of them is be the biggest fan, which is trying to make sure that we’re a supporter of the people that we work with. That the reason why we work with them is because we find them interesting. So why wouldn’t we carry that through well, and working with them, of being the biggest supporter. Then we’ve got a bit of a focus at the minute of trying to, again, another one of these 10 principles that we have as a company culture is make memories, which as a team, when where we prioritise making memories of the things that we do. So if we do something together, we tried to make it a bit special or an experience. And we tried to take that into the client relationships where it’s how can we take a meeting, and make it a step further than that, which is closer to a memory, or an experience or something that I enjoy, you’re all this kind of thing. And then the third is probably, standing out, trying to stand out in what we do, in terms of the touch points we have with them. And that’s really minor things from sending them a personalised card, the little touches like that and trying to stand out and find moments where we can stand out, whether it’s their birthday, or there’s some date that we know about or something like this. How can we do something around that point to help us stand out from everybody else? Who is in their world? You know, brands have a lot of partners, people that they’re involved with, things like that, how can we do something different that stands out, I think those three things which are off the top of my head that I think we tried to focus on here,
Jenny Plant 36:46
Great tips there to be honest, Ash, get under the skin of the client understand their outcomes. That’s a big thing – for account managers- be their biggest fan!
Ash 36:57
Or number one, if they have a PA or Executive Assistant, they are the most important people in the world, they are the keys.
Jenny Plant 37:10
Great tip, great tip.
Ash 37:12
If they’ve got a PA or Executive Assistant, I think there’s maybe a tendency that they can get overlooked, and it’s actually the opposite. In my experience, there’s nobody that’s closer to that CEO or something like this, than their PA or EA and they play such an immensely understated roles in their lives, which if people knew they’d be literally blown away. And I feel it could be a thing that they get overlooked in the process. If you are in an agency, and you’re trying to deal with or have got a relationship with the founder and they’ve got a PA, you might go past the PA or think that they’re not as important that might happen. Okay, honestly can’t be further from the truth.
Jenny Plant 38:06
I’m 100% with you. And it reminds me of my days in advertising years ago when the secretaries used to receive better presents than anybody else. You know, it’s almost something that I think we’ve lost. But I just want to pick up on another couple of points you said about being their biggest fan, I think one of the things that is sometimes overlooked by account managers is making sure they follow what their clients are doing on LinkedIn, for example, and engage with them because it’s another opportunity for you to stay top of mind and standing out. I remember that actually Andrew Dobby was unboxing a big goodie bag that you’d sent him with Great Influence branded stuff. So that was a cool move. And then I just want to ask you a question with this making memories, which is brilliant idea. Turning meetings into experiences. Can you give any examples of where you’ve done that?
Ash 39:02
Yes, I’ve gone to Barry’s with multiple people that we’ve worked with. So Barry’s the workout class, Hiit class, 60 minutes. It’s brutal.
Jenny Plant 39:12
You did those with a couple of clients? Love it.
Ash 39:18
One of them was literally during the meeting was in
Jenny Plant 39:22
It was talking business as you were punching.?
Ash 39:24
It was we went and did a gym workout. And we were on the rowers that was our meeting – it was in the gym.
Jenny Plant 39:35
Love it. Love it. The modern-day doing business. They used to be over a whiskey and a cigar didn’t it, a kind of smoking room? Final question Ash. Just in terms of your understanding or your kind of perspective on the future of personal branding. Where do you think it’s going to go?
Ash 39:53
I think it’s getting more crowded and what is happening is that I see it as similar to the X Factor, where you have that competition where how many people enter into the X Factor, maybe 10,000. But really, there’s max four good people. And that is what’s happening within personal branding right now 10,000 people are showing up because there’s no barrier to entry at all. And the world is inviting them onto the stage, it’s getting more crowded. Therefore, it’s even more important to make sure that you’re standing out and doing it. And I think the people that are twofold, one, figure out how they can stand out in that crowd. I think that comes from doing some looking at what everybody is doing, right? How can I do something different, but actually, if the crowd aren’t all good singers, the way to stand out is to be a good singer. So take more time with the ideas that you’re putting out into the world because, you can’t train being a good singer, you either are or not, it’s very difficult to gain that skill. But you can train having better ideas and better thoughts and the art of looking around your world and trying to distil something into a takeaway, you can train that. So in a world where there’s 10,000, awful singers try to spend a bit more time being a better singer. I think is a good one, and then look at what the rest of the internet is doing. Because there’s a lag, there’s a lag between everyone in business building a personal brand, and internet creators building one. So the internet creators are at the forefront of everything of how you do it well, then behind them is celebrities and high profile people, then behind that is our crowd. So if you look at what the those in the forefront are doing, you can again, that element of standing out in the crowd. Look at what internet creators are doing, and see how they’re building their brand and the kind of content they’re doing and how they’re leveraging things. I have learned the most on personal branding from somebody not in my circle, from Mr. Beast, the YouTuber. He’s on Lex Friedman’s podcast this week, and I’ve been watching that. It is three hours long. I watched him on Joe Rogan, I watched him on another thing. Everything that he says about how to build an audience and how to capture attention is mind blowing.
Jenny Plant 43:10
Great tips there. I have only just been introduced to Mr. Beast. I’m a little bit behind the times. But wow.
Ash 43:15
One of the biggest YouTubers, if not the biggest YouTuber in the world.
Jenny Plant 43:19
I know and you just get absorbed with it don’t you so he’s doing it so well. Great, great pieces of advice. I also want to give a shout out to you and Claudia actually, your COO, what you do online really stands out for me as well. There’s always a huge amount of engagement because it is so different. So you both I think are great role models. Listen, Ash, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time and also for sharing so many tips and insights and advice. Who would you like to be contacted by if there’s someone listening? And what’s the best way of getting in touch?
Ash 43:58
Anyone? I’m always open to talking to everyone. I feel fortunate that someone wants to talk to me in the first place. So I’m Ash Jones on LinkedIn. It’s the best place to get me.
Jenny Plant 44:10
Excellent. All right, Ash, thank you so much for your time. This has been brilliant.
Ash 44:14
No, thank you. It’s been a really good conversation.
