Why Should Branding Make a Difference to You?

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

People don’t like to think of themselves like a hamburger, detergent, or any other product . . . but in many respects, you are a brand just like any other. In this interview with Jon Michail, Founder & Group CEO of Image Group International, we discuss career branding understandably so you can understand why you need to start developing one NOW and not waiting.

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So my guest today is Jon Michail, who’s founder and group CEO of Image Group International and bestselling author of “Life Branding.” If you’re watching this on YouTube or on the JobSearchTV.com app, you can see that over his left shoulder.

He and his firm help you articulate a personal vision and strategy in a step-by-step roadmap to achieving perfect positioning and elevation both online and offline to attract your ideal client, investor, and stakeholder.

Jon, welcome! Great to have you.

Hi, Jeff. How are you doing?

I’m feeling fabulous today. And I know we’re going to have a good conversation because we’re going to talk about everyone’s favorite topic, the one that makes people roll their eyes into the back of their head: branding. And don’t click away. Please, don’t click away. This guy’s good.

And let me just start off with the obvious question. People don’t like to think of themselves like a hamburger, a detergent, or any other type of product. But they are, aren’t they? Why why does branding really make a difference to folks?

It matters because if you want to stand out in a very crowded world, you better basically become recognizable. And the only way you’re going to do that is by creating yourself as a brand, as a positioning in the marketplace.

And of course, I don’t have to tell you more about that. You’ve got a president that’s the champion of branding. And we’ll leave politics out of it today, Jeff.

So so branding works. It works for Hollywood, it works for Broadway, it works for Wall Street, it works right across the board. Branding is positioning. So it’s essential.

And what happens when you brand yourself is you don’t have to sell yourself anymore, Jeff. And and isn’t that a great thing? Don’t we all like to be bought as opposed to for us to have to sell ourselves?

You know, it’s so funny you talk this way because, you know, one of the things I always tell as a story about American product—and by the way, folks, that is not a Brooklyn accent that you’re listening to—there’s a US product called Charmin that got introduced many years ago. And, you know, it’s toilet paper. You know, like, what’s the big deal? It’s toilet paper. And they came out with this obnoxious commercial that everyone hated, but they bought the product. Because it’s the notion of being able to be in people’s minds, to have mind share all the time, so that you don’t have to sell yourself anymore. They just know you, right?

Spot on. Absolutely. And that’s a great example. And that’s what it’s all about. We’re talking about a world that’s changed now in the last three to four months like nothing before in memory. It’s going to be a very, very competitive world, more so than ever anything we’ve experienced in the past.

So, how are you going to get noticed? How are you going to become memorable? How would people know that you matter unless you start positioning yourself in the—of course, online world, because that’s going to be important for leverage, but of course in the offline world as well.

So your brand, from my perspective, on a very simple perspective, is really your reputation. It’s how you’re seen in the world, and it’s essential from that perspective.

Life is so short. We’re here one day, and next day we’re gone. My story to my clients is this: You’ve got an opportunity, one opportunity to really express yourself, this deeper message that you’ve got, your story that you want to share with the world. If you don’t do it, who’s going to do it for you? If you don’t do it, who’s going to do it for you?

So you’ve got to get right onto this. And I know if you’re an introvert or you’re a bit shy or so on, you might sort of pull back and say, “Oh, well, I don’t like that,” or get squeamish about it. But the reality is it all matters, and your brand, your personal brand, matters a lot.

And for the introvert, I always think of the brand as being the competent, capable one who doesn’t toot his own horn, who doesn’t need to self-promote, who’s known and has that reputation that everyone goes to. And that becomes the brand, right?

Sure. Sure. And and absolutely. And and some of my my greatest success stories have been introverts.

And the thing about introverts is this, as opposed to extroverts: Introverts specifically by nature do a lot of things without bothering about getting noticed.

But the reality is, after they’ve experienced what the positioning, marketing, self-marketing will do for their lives—career, business included—what they normally say to me is, “Jon, how long has this been around? I should have been doing this a long time ago.”

So they would never they would never go back to doing it the old way ever again. You know, and it does push them a bit.

But I have never met, Jeff, out of the, I don’t know, seven and a half thousand one-on-one coaching sessions I’ve done—and I’m talking about hundreds of thousands in my seminars worldwide—I’ve never met anybody that deep down doesn’t want to get their voice out. Not one.

You know, so we create stories as human beings and excuses why we don’t do things. But the moment you experience some gold, you‘ll never go back to silver.

I love that statement.

So we’ve convinced everyone they should pay attention and start looking at branding themselves, creating reputation so that people come to them. By the way, out of curiosity, do you see a difference between reputation and brand for individuals professionally? And if so, what’s the difference?

Again, on a very simple level, basically your brand is what will communicate about your reputation.

So although I’m using them virtually the same, there is distinctions. Because your brand positioning in the marketplace is what you’re going to be known as, your reputation. So reputation is really how the world sees you outside of you. Yeah?

Mm-hmm.

Where brand is part of that as well, but brand also is how you see yourself inside of you as well, if that makes sense. So what happens with brand is you’ve got the opportunity to change aspects of your brand that you don’t like anymore, that maybe you’ve evolved from, or you’ve got to readapt.

For instance, in this current crisis that we’re all living through, rebranding or repositioning yourself is part of the pivot, essential. And if you haven’t got that in your cache of, you know, in your toolbox, you’re going

…to be in a bit of trouble, because what you’ve learned in the past will not necessarily lead you into the future that we’re going into.

And have you noticed from just a skills point of view and just a way of being, where we’re at right now with a lot of people, millions of people around the world, it’s basically what’s more important right now is your copability skills as opposed to your capability skills.

Interesting.

That also is part of your personal brand. And I believe how you cope with what we’re going through right now in the employment market, business market, life market is how your personal brand will be defined.

And folks, just to get clear, we’re recording this at the time of COVID-19, so if you’re watching this three or four years from now, this is what we’re talking about. And what we’re going to cover is broadly applicable from a career standpoint, because from my vantage point as a former headhunter, I look at it from the standpoint of, if you do great work and you do it within your office, and those 8, 10, 12, 50 people know about you, that’s great. But who else? Who else? Of the 3 billion people on the planet, who else knows about you? Your wife, husband, partner? Well, that’s nice. But isn’t it a lot easier if you have your name out there and people see you as the expert?

Yes. And that’s the possibility you’ve got today with online, and of course tech. So there’s no better opportunity. You could be in your hideaway office in some very remote area on the planet, and you could have worldwide clients. That’s branding at its best, and you’re using the medium of technology to do that.

So for me, leverage is a key here, leveraging all aspects of your life. So if you want to maximize your value in this lifetime, you better start taking control of your personal brand, because if you don’t, somebody else will. And if I want to do business with you, Jeff, as an example, the first thing I’m going to do is Google you. And from Google perspective, I’m going to find out what’s out there so then I can make decisions how we’re going to do business together, and if we’re going to do business together.

So what’s happening is, especially through this crisis, a lot of people were not taking advantage of their personal brand prior to this, because human beings have got a nature to become complacent. Very complacent in life, especially when things are going well. When things are going well, we think that’s going to be like that forever, where really that’s a dangerous concept to be living by. And of course, a lot of people have found that out. They’ve trusted the system too much.

And the system doesn’t always work to your advantage. So my story to my clients, including big corporations, big corporates, or to entrepreneurs, small business, or the individual is this: The employer, the government, whatever, has their own agendas. What is your agenda? And does it fit?

Because if you don’t create your future—and of course, your personal brand is part of that journey—then you’re at the disposal of forces outside of you. What personal branding does is gets you to take on the responsibility to become your own self-force.

Which is good because, in effect, folks, you’re the CEO of your own business, whether you’re an employee or not. And as the CEO, you’ve got shareholders: your wife, husband, partner, the children. These are your shareholders that you report to, but you’re ultimately responsible. And by taking control of your career in this way, creating the brand/reputation, ensuring that more people know about you, it makes a huge difference.

So I want to advance this and start looking at how does someone build their brand? I know you have a step-by-step approach. Let’s do it!

Okay. Well, let’s get into it and keep it very simple again. If you can imagine, Jeff, a pyramid on a very simplistic perspective. At the bottom of the pyramid, we have what we call our build section. Our build section is really the foundations. And that fits in specifically with the whole concept of package.

The second part is what we call promote. Promote also fits in with our second part called positioning.

And the last part, on the top of the pyramid, is known as what we call cash-in. And cash-in is what leads to our profit.

The cash-in also, though, depending who the client is—and I have numerous clients in different areas. I have clients, of course, that want to make more money. That’s an obvious one. And by the way, when we talk about money, we celebrate it as a tool to make your life better. That’s number one. So we have no charge around that, or any snottiness around, “Ooh, we don’t talk about those things.” No, we talk about that, and we actually get you to own that.

Number two, for different clients, of course a lot of my other clients that are very wealthy, they don’t care about money. But what they do care about is their reputation. And their reputation at times, for a lot of people in society, is more important than the money. It might be their number one motivational drive on a daily basis, making sure their reputation is spot on.

And the last one is, of course, legacy. And I have clients, normally 45-plus in the legacy world, that are thinking about what are they going to leave behind. So normally, if I’m working with a millennial, they’re not thinking about legacy. And most of my clients are generally 30, 32-plus.

And the reason for that is because most, in my experience, most people start to find out that they need to start working on themselves in different ways normally after 35-odd. When they have a midlife crisis, they’ve bought the story: Go to school, be a good boy, be a good girl, get your degree, get educated, and get that great job, and life’s going to be really cool.

Well, guess what? What they discover when they hit a certain age and experience—35, 40, whatever—hey, life wasn’t exactly the way I was told. What your personal brand does, doesn’t matter if you’re going to work for a corporation, you become an intrapreneur, you’re going to do it for yourself, you become an entrepreneur. But the bottom line is your personal brand gets you to control your own destiny.

Amen, brother. So in building that foundation, how does someone start in their career to build the foundation? The easiest thing that comes to my mind is do a good job! But I know there’s more than that.

Definitely do a good job, and that’s a great start. But I’ve got to tell you, I’ve branded men and women that have done actually an average job. And that’s the thing with branding: You don’t have to be the best.

Because branding is—the positioning is a perception. It’s a perception in the marketplace. So when I meet somebody that’s a perfectionist that wants to get 100% right all the time, I know that there’s probably a lot of anxiety going on there and all sorts of other stuff. This is not about being 100%. I call it—it’s about being a perfect imperfection. Because that’s what we are. We’re all perfect imperfections.

So it’s all about perception. It’s about how do you basically take a human being and create a perception, perceived value, that’s a lot higher than they’ve ever, ever imagined. It’s like, example, if I’m going to sell you this pen, how do I get you to be convinced that this pen is not worth a dollar, but is actually worth $10?

And that’s how I discovered branding, by accident, by something as an example like this. So this product here is worth $10 to the person that perceives that as $10 value.

 

And you don’t need a lot of them, you just need the right one.

You don’t need a—that’s 100%. Now, if you’re really good and you’re a master at what you do, fantastic. Good for you. But not every human being is going to be that. You don’t have to be so perfect or so extraordinary in what you do to maximize your value as a human being. You really don’t.

And I think sometimes university professors overplay this at times because basically real life’s not like that. It might be like that at university, but real life doesn’t mean you have to be so perfect at something to do really well out of it, especially if you’re an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs don’t worry about perfection. They just get on with it. They just create, fail, get back up, and have another shot at it. That’s what it’s all about. That’s life. And that’s what I support big time.

Because if you’re going to get your message out, your story, how are you going to get it if you don’t start putting it out there and promoting it?

So we advanced to promote. I was still back on build.

You can go back to build.

I’m just making sure. So on build, it starts off with being capable, competent. It doesn’t require exceptional. It’s nice to be exceptional, but it’s the foundation for what it is that you do is where we’re starting off with.

Yes, 100%.

And then you move to promote. And thus, it becomes what are you promoting? How are you promoting? Walk folks through that for us.

Okay. So again, I’ll just go back to the build before I go to promote. The reason we build is, if you don’t build, no different to building a house, that means your foundations are loose, and eventually, if you don’t get your foundations right, the house eventually will collapse. Your personal brand potentially could collapse as well if you don’t get the foundations right.

So that’s where the system comes in from that pyramid that I mentioned to you earlier. So we get the foundations right. And then the promote is how do we get the key messages out there? And the example of that is, of course, social media, LinkedIn, etc.

But it’s following the system. Because if you don’t follow the system and you just go and post social media, start putting stories out there, put a lot of content out there—the whole message: content, content, content!—you’re going to be lost in noise, because you’re not following a strategic approach to get the results that you want to get by following this process.

So most people, in my experience, are not following any form of system. It’s very ad hoc, very, very reactionary, and at times all over the place. So they’ve got a lot of—they’re creating a lot of output out there, but there’s very little input.

And what I noticed with—I tried this out, Jeff. All these Facebook likes. I had all these Facebook likes, right? So I put them in a package, I went to my bank manager, and I said, “Look how many Facebook likes.” And he said to me, “What am I going to do with that? Show me the cash.”

So the results around basically your brand is not just the perception that you’re popular out there. It’s what are you bringing in, what value are you bringing in to yourself so you can maximize who you are. And a part of that, of course, is financial. Part of that is reputational and other aspects that would come from that, whatever is important to you.

So the promote is essential. Now, promote also means mainstream media as well. People underplay that in today’s world. But depending what segment of the market you’re speaking to, that still has an important role to play, 100%. And if utilized effectively, will also get you publicity, will get you known in the wider world, even if it is a little bit of the old world. The reality is they still work very well together, and that’s part of getting your messages out there.

Because even if you’re going for a job, and you were a recruiter—and of course the world today, recruiters will check you out online, they will do all sorts of different tests on you. If you don’t exist on Google, as an example, as we know, like Jeff Bezos said of Amazon, you don’t exist.

So I can’t tell you how many people to this day will come to me and say, “Jon, I want to be positioned, I want to be branded, I want to be specifically promoted,” and then you do a search on them and there’s hardly anything on them, but they claim to be this, and claim to be that, and claim to be that. Now, I’m not denying that. All I’m saying is the world might not believe you.

Because—

We all look for validation over Google.

100%. And so the social proof of that also with the likes and so on before is important, but what I’m saying is it’s not the number one. You’ve got to be thinking beyond just quick likes, and you’ve got to start thinking about what returns are we going to bring in here. Because the problem with a lot of content is, you get a lot of output, but what’s the input?

And the input is your return on investment. What’s that going to look like in reference to, in this case, let’s say, going for a job, or looking for investors, or trying to grow your business, sales for instance. That’s the input, and it’s essential that you focus on that input.

So for people who have a confusing message, you know, they’re expert at one thing, but they also promote something else. How does that adversely impact them?

That’s a great question, and that’s essential. And as we know in the marketing world, we would call that a niche. You’ve got to create yourself a niche of who you are. And in my experience, especially in the online world, you’ve got to even consider creating a micro-niche, a niche of a niche.

Because it depends what market you’re going for. Most models online are a mass model.

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