Making a Difference with Your Brand & Reputation

Actively managing your personal brand is critical if you want to make a significant impact in the areas of your life important to you. What you say and what you do influences how people perceive you, so take note that your personal branding will determine how successfully you’ll be able to make an impact in life.

Gina Balarin is a hugely successful and well-renowned keynote speaker and marketing expert.

She is equally passionate about speaking as she is about marketing and will use her words, experiences, and services to inspire others to see their own potential.

She has spoken at events, panel discussions, on video and much more all around the world.

She's a director of Verballistics, a specialist communication consultancy that helps software and services companies and their leaders speak right and present more effectively.

It hasn't always been an easy ride, though.

Relatively early in her career, she discovered that she doesn't see things the way most people do.

She gets frustrated when the rules are illogical and things don't make sense. So she started her own company instead.

Now she's an entrepreneur, helping marketers around the world do marketing that they're proud of.

She sits on a couple of boards, has a master's degree in management communications, is a Fellow of the CIM and the MCIM, and is a member of the PSA.

She has written a couple of books, including The Secret Army: Leadership, Marketing and the Power of People, and 200 poems to add to it.

Gina is a hugely successful TEDx speaker, having also featured on numerous television and radio program.

With 20 years of leading marketing experience, Gina is a perfect choice for all manner of speaking events.

With an ability to speak honestly with a human touch, Gina is a revered speaker, often dubbed as a B2B marketing genius who can touch on all subjects.

Mostly, she's just interested in helping people find ways to be prouder of who they are, what they do, and how they make a difference in the world.

How Gina Thinks Of Herself As A Brand

Gina lived in Africa for the first 26 years of her life. Then she moved to the UK for 13 years before coming to Australia just over three years ago. She sees herself as location agnostic because her brand isn't associated with an identity or a location. She's currently based in Queensland, possibly where she'll be for the next few years.

For Gina, the question about how your brand is associated with your location is tricky.

She thinks that if she lived in Africa and had stayed in Africa, the chances are she would have had a brand that made her identify as African.

According to her, the place where you were born greatly influences who you are.

She thinks that there is an awareness in people who've lived in different parts of the world that helps them understand that people are more than just one culture.

Gina mentions, "I guess, while one chooses to define one's own brand, to a certain extent, your brand is defined by your experiences, by where you've lived, by who you've met, by the jobs that you've had, and the friends that you've had."

Because of that, she thinks that her brand as an international speaker has only benefited from working with people on six continents over the years.

It made her realise that there are a lot of cultural variations and nuances.

When I asked Gina if she thinks of herself as a brand or just as Gina, she openly shared that this is the question she struggles with.

Value authenticity is one of her core values, but she finds it tricky to answer whether she considers herself brand Gina or just Gina.

Many speakers like to identify themselves as their brand, so they have a site named after them, so Gina has thought about registering ginabalarin.com.

Why is that? She says, "...because there's something about calling myself brand of my name that feels almost a little bit, I don't know, egotistical to me, and I struggle with that because I am me. No one but me. But by the same token, I don't want to be an aggrandised version of myself. That doesn't sit with my brand value of humility and authenticity."

Gina doesn't want to be seen as arrogant, and there's a little voice that says, "Who are you to say you're amazing?"

Over the years, she accumulated a fair amount of relevant experience, making her trust that she should share her brand with the world.

How Others Perceive Gina

When asked if she'd thought about how others perceived her, Gina shared that her background had actually been on stage ever since.

She's been performing as a dancer on stage since she was seven and had her first leading role as a ballerina at nine.

She thinks that if you've been on stage, you have an awareness that there is a persona that exists in the idealised location that is literally on the platform.

Gina also studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree, originally in drama and linguistics, so she has always been fully aware of what it's been like to be a performer.

It's an advantage for her because it means that you know how you hold and carry yourself and look on stage. But it's also a disadvantage at the same time because there's a tendency for actors and actresses to be one thing in front of a camera and another thing behind it.

That doesn't sit comfortably with her values of authenticity, but that means she's aware of the fact that brand Gina exists in everything that she does.

She also highlights the quote, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit."

That's why Gina tried to be excellent in every interaction. It's a hard ask, but it's a good goal for her.

The Importance Of Reputation

Gina hadn't realise how important one's reputation is as an employee until she was put in an organisation where her colleague was being promoted, and she wasn't.

While they were together, her colleague received two promotions in two and a half years, while she was still sitting there wondering why she wasn't promoted when her work was of the same quality.

It made her very upset, and she demonstrated discomfort in the workplace.

At the time, she hadn't thought much about it, but later she realised that the incident could potentially damage her reputation as a loyal and diligent employee.

Subsequently, someone reached out to Gina and tried to nit-hunt her for a job. It ended up happening, but a few months after she had anticipated.

During those few months, she realised that she had to change her behaviour if she wanted to change how people saw her in the organisation.

What Gina did was she embodied the saying, "Dress for the job you want."

For those three months, she went to the office in suits, which was unheard of because it was where people would wear jeans and jumpers to work most days. It defined the persona and reputation that she wanted to build, which were professionalism, diligence, duty, and responsibility.

When she left the organisation, she did win an award and get a significant increase, which she would never have been able to dream of a couple of years before.

It required a significant prospective change, and Gina stepped into her own courage that if she wanted something, she needed to behave in a way that would show people she was worth it.

She struggled because she would work in her previous organisations and get upset. She would figure out that things were wrong and then leave because it wasn't worth being able to make a change.

The unfortunate thing for Gina is that, as a junior, you don't have that much ability to make change happen.

But now, younger people have more of a voice compared to before.

Gina thinks that if you have people who can help you identify how to use that voice, you can be more of a brand advocate for yourself right from the beginning.

How Gina’s Values & Beliefs Were Established

Gina believes that our values are formed early in life, whether we recognise them or not.

She thinks it's possible to adjust your values if you realise that the ones you have aren't serving you or the people around you.

Gina says, "I do think that the way your parents raised you, the culture you grew up in, and the society that you're a part of gives you a certain set of values that tell you this behaviour is acceptable and this behaviour is unacceptable."

She was very grateful to her parents, who raised her with values that showed great respect for others, the truth, hard work, and yourself.

However, she was required to think differently about the values of self-promotion when she moved from Africa to Europe, and specifically to the United Kingdom.

Gina is very gregarious and outgoing, but she found that the big personality she brought with her everywhere was a little bit too much for people in the UK. They found her overwhelming. That's why she consciously had to change her behaviour so that she wasn't quite as forceful in her personality.

It also made her reflect on how much she was talking and how much she was listening. That's the skill Gina is grateful she learned.

Not necessarily her value changed, but her ability to reflect on other people's perspectives.

Their value is what they bring to the world. It's a different thing from the values that we have. It made her reconsider the Gina brand, which is not about Gina.

It's actually about the people around you and how it's far more important to be someone who brings out the best in others than to be someone comfortable standing up on stage and giving an impromptu speech.

The TEDx presentation was a wonderful experience for Gina because it was simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. As she mentions, "Having been on stage for many years, being on the TEDx stage was no different. The difference was the level of rigour, expertise, and discipline that was required."

It was the first time she recorded and watched herself giving a presentation. It was shocking for her. She figured out that you have no idea how many bad habits you have until you realise how badly you need to be brilliant.

Gina says that she was an okay speaker but not a brilliant one.

Preparing for a TEDx talk, she spent about 40 to 60 hours of rehearsal for a 17-minute speech, forcing her to consider what a great speaker is and how she could be closer to that vision of greatness.

Gina said it was not easy, but it was well worth it because she learned a lot.

She believes that every speaker should admit they're not perfect because there is always room for improvement.

Values Tested & Morality Intact

When asked if her values had been tested and if she had to make changes to keep her values and morality intact, Gina reflected not only on her values but also on why scenarios had changed.

In the past, she didn't realise that her values were being violated.

But retrospectively, as she looks back at those scenarios, she now realises it's no wonder they couldn't work together. There are circumstances where this has happened, and it's happened sadly more than once with clients she works with.

She realised that while her values of hard work, dedication, and service are key to who she is and how she brings value to the world, this perception was not reciprocated.

It's sad for Gina to figure out that one of the organisations she worked for treated their employees like disposable assets rather than something you would want as fixed full-time employees.

She says, "They would treat people poorly until they literally burned out, throw them away, and find someone else."

For her, that was a massive violation of values. It made her realise that there wasn't mutual respect and a sense of care or authenticity in the sense of who they stood for and cared for. That was a big wake-up call, and it made Gina appreciate the nature of the people she works with, but then it stopped because they were taking advantage of her, and that's not okay.

She hopes that someone will come to her and do the same thing if that happens to her.

Gina recalled an experience when she worked for an organisation, working with their clients. She was almost a part of the extended team, and it was an interesting dynamic to be part of a team and not have a team.

In the coaching world, Gina sees organisations from the outside and observes where senior marketers have their own challenges.

She's incredibly grateful to work for organisations that give their people the time and the finance to be able to say, "Go, coach and train yourself. Find someone who can help you go through this organisational challenge."

It also reveals to her what's happening behind these organisations' scenes.

For Gina, it's nice to be able to look from the outside in rather than be in an organisation where you don't have any choice over what happens to who you report to or who reports to you to a large extent.

Gina shares an experience where she once read a wonderful description that a team wrote about her.

She thought to herself, "Wow, that's a pretty accomplished person. She sounds pretty awesome."

It almost took her a minute to realise that the team was talking about her. But before that, she made friends on LinkedIn that she had never met in real life, yet they became her friends and colleagues.

People have reflected and said to her, "Oh, yes, Gina. You do this because you're always like this," or "Yes, but that's just the way you are."

For Gina, that was the unconscious reflection: "Hey, there is a brand. It's a brand I've put out there into the world."

It's a brand that, for Gina, is incredibly valuable and meaningful to get reflected on.

It's not just a persona. It's not just an identity that she's putting out there. They are more than the sum of their parts.

She thinks the lesson for others in this is that we don't just have to portray a fraction of ourselves because the world is becoming far more open to realising that humans are a full spectrum.

We have highs and lows. We have good and bad days. We have triumphs and we have disasters.

We need to treat those two impostors just the same as Rudyard Kipling would tell us.

Gina believes that if we can reflect on our entire being and show parts of ourselves, reflect on them, and improve the bits of ourselves that we don't like, our brand is not static.

We don't end up with a caricature of ourselves. Instead, we end up being able to share more of ourselves with the rest of the world.

She thinks that in these post-COVID days, people are far more open and responsive to a full person.

The Impact of Relevance

Gina says that one of the things she has enjoyed about my book is the reflection that brand is a conscious activity and that you can build a brand from any age to any age.

She finds it intriguing to think about the career spectrum from when you first start a job to when you decide to retire. You can say that you have relevance to different people across the world.

You talk about relevance in your community, relevance in your society, relevance in your country, relevance in your job or with your employers.

The challenge for Gina has always been to identify that you can only have a certain amount of relevance at any time. That requires focus, and being able to focus requires a certain amount of discipline.

It also helps her understand why other elements of her brand wouldn't have been at the fore if she were purely focused on building a community.

Gina believes it's important to acknowledge that people will see different parts of you depending on the context in which they observe you. Your brand will be somewhat different depending on who you work with.

For Gina, the element of brand relevance is that we are all multifaceted. We can pick and choose which facets of that light we want to shine on.

She thinks that to be a properly whole and holistic brand, it's important to realise that you as a brand are all of these things together and that every person you touch has the same facets of their personality.

So for Gina, we need to use the brand with an element of caution. Just because we see someone whose brand we don't like doesn't mean that their whole personality is that.

We've only seen one tiny little facet of their personality, and perhaps if we rotated them 360 degrees or even 50 degrees, we'd see them in a whole new light.

What Gina would advise for those brands that are a little bit edgy is to be kind about the way they do things, whatever it might be.

You can be edgy. You can be quirky. You can be different. You can even be bizarre if you want, but, whatever you do, be kind.

Mentoring & Being Supported

Gina recalls that at an early age, she identified with a song. That song was ‘The Greatest Love of All’ by Whitney Houston.

She mentions, "And there's a line in that, which is, ‘I never found anyone who fulfilled my need, a lonely place to be, and so I learned to depend on me.’"

Gina finds it sad that, as a kid, you don't identify with a mentor. She suspects that it's because there weren't that many wonderful female mentors as a kid born in the 80s.

We didn't have female presidents and prime ministers. We didn't have that many female CEOs.

Those in positions of power were often less kind to people than they needed to be because they had to do what they had to do to exist in a man's world.

Gina didn't find that there were mentors in an outside context, and so in a work environment, she figured there wasn't anyone who would be there for her.

In retrospect, she thinks that saying she didn't have any mentors was wrong.

One of Gina's first full-time jobs was in an organisation where she could do what Dan Pinks calls AMP, which means autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

There was a wonderful man who helped her do everything she needed.

He gave her autonomy. She had the mastery. She was able to demonstrate purpose.

Without thinking about it, that's actually a mentorship, and what subsequently happened is that Gina then expected every employer to give her autonomy, mastery, and purpose moving forward.

When she couldn't achieve those, she was frustrated because she had such high expectations.

Gina realised that if you don't have mentors, you need to ask for them and find them. You need to look for them. You need to find them.

She also discovers that she has a group of mutual mentors who tell each other what's great and, at the same time, point out where they need to improve and how to make things better.

That has been incredibly helpful moving forward.

Gina believes that the role of mentorship is incredibly important, so she has also acted as a mentor for junior marketers in the past.

It's an incredibly rewarding experience for her, and she would encourage anyone to be a mentor as well as look for a mentor.

It's because the process of reflecting on who you are and how you behave in a work context or any other context is important for your personal and professional development.

Directorship & Branding

For Gina, Verballistics, which means making your words go mental, is a lovely idea. But in a way, it's a placeholder and a company name.

She hasn't invested in the brand because she doesn't expect it to become something that dominates the world.

She thought that it was never going to be a Coca-Cola or going to be one of the big four accounting firms.

It's enough that it is identifiable as something that has to do with words and has to do with meaning.

The challenge that Gina has is that the brand "Gina" is more than the sum of Verballistics parts.

Verballistics is a marketing agency that does content and marketing strategy.

It is about the corporate existence of a company that serves b2b organisations, predominantly software as a service or services organisations.

But Gina is more than that. She is a coach, a speaker, and a writer of various things.

She is someone who can help people understand words and figure out how they need to change the way they see words, how they use words, and how they tell stories.

So Gina struggles to put all the elements of a person and a persona into a company.

She says, "It's easy enough if your company has 10,000 or 50,000 employees that you do all of these various things because you have a division for each thing. But how do you divide Gina Balarin into a series of divisions? You can't."

For Gina, she is not the kind of person who segments herself into different categories depending on what people need.

She has struggled with the idea of separating the Gina Balarin brand from the Verballistics brand.

She mentions she is yet to be able to find something that she's really comfortable with as a solution.

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

I want to express my gratitude to Gina Balarin for sharing some fabulous insights, not only from the perspective of branding but also of reputation and values.

Thank you for listening to this episode. Please leave a five-star review and subscribe for more episodes if you enjoyed it.

If you'd like to learn more about developing your personal brand, please get in touch or grab a copy of Brand New Brand You.

Helping Others Build their Brand & Reputation with Jaqui Lane

Actively managing your personal brand is critical if you want to make a significant impact in the areas of your life important to you. What you say and what you do influences how people perceive you, so take note that your personal branding will determine how successfully you’ll be able to make an impact in life.

Jaqui Lane is one of Australia's leading business historians, having researched and written books for the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, EMCOR, Cleanaway, Woolworths, Patrick’s, Peter Lehmann Wines, and the Asia Center Foundation.

She has interviewed over 900 Australian business people, published over 400 business books, written 27 business history books, and authored over 200 articles.

Jaqui’s vision is to change the world, one book at a time. She does this by helping business people share their knowledge and insights through writing, publishing, and marketing their own quality business books.

There's nothing about the writing, editing, production, publishing, and selling of business books around the world that Jaqui doesn't know.

She understands how to take the idea of a business book and guide entrepreneurs, company directors, consultants, and professionals through the whole process of creating a business book that will increase their profile, build a long-lasting legacy, and propel their reputation and relevance.

Jaqui's passion for literacy is shared through her involvement in a number of charities, including being the founding chairman of The Footpath Library, a charity that provides books to homeless and needy people across Australia.

She is currently a role model for Book in Homes Australia, a charity established to provide new books to lower socio-economic and remote students throughout Australia.

Jaqui is originally from New Zealand and refers to herself as an Australasian. Growing up with three older brothers, she learned early, the skills needed to cut through, to be seen, and heard.

She has a master's degree in Russian Politics, is a keen hiker and scuba diver, and has just come back from the Flinders Ranges.

Defining Jaqui As A Brand

Jaqui got a lot of calls from people, whether they’re corporate or business people, saying that they’ve been told to call her because she’s the book lady.

Her usual response to that is that she’s happy to be known as the book lady rather than the bag lady, so her brand is a specialist book person.

Jaqui is typically focused on business books, but she also often helps people who are writing their biographies. Overall, she’s just very passionate about books.

Her brand would be somebody who is knowledgeable, caring, trustworthy, energetic, engaging, great at execution, who stands up, and who has great insights.

Helping Others Build Their Brand

Jaqui is currently working on a couple of histories at the moment, and the very big questions that she always asks her clients in the early stages are, "What are your key messages and values? What would you like the reader to take out of this?"

For CommBank, she thinks a really powerful longevity part of their brand was that they're a bank for all Australians

Their heritage goes back to 1912. After the Federation, they were the savings bank that most people joined, because traditionally, trading banks weren't allowed in savings banking.

They were the bank for migrants. A lot of new Australians back in the 50s became Commonwealth Bank customers.

So she thinks they have a long and proud legacy of being a bank for everybody, and that comes out very strongly.

Jaqui thinks over generations, perhaps that's been forgotten, as it naturally sometimes does unless you're actually constantly communicating that story.

She mentioned a great video she once watched that said you can't just tell the story once and think everybody's got it. You have to keep telling it and reminding people of it, and just when you get to the point where you're sick of talking about it, it is probably the time you need to keep talking about it even more.

The relevance piece is also underpinned by the values, according to Jaqui. So if a value for your bank is supporting all Australians, that’s a strong and enduring value.

But unless you're aware of it and the organisation is constantly referring to it and articulating it, it could get lost.

How Others Perceive Jaqui

Jaqui believes that people perceive her as direct, honest, trustworthy, knowledgeable, a little cheeky, enjoys a good laugh, and is more interested in her cat than in herself.

She also thinks other people perceive her as someone who’s very considerate and who has great curiosity and intellectual interest.

Her subset of skills around how to publish a book is kind of a given, and it’s really more about the intellectual capacity that she can bring to a discussion.

Jaqui is currently working with people on a book on AI and ethics, data analytics, how to run a psychiatry practice, the caring economy, empathic leadership, and others. They’re a very broad range of topics, and she’s fascinated by all of them.

Given that Jaqui’s mission is to change the world for the better, one book at a time, she believes you can only really effectively do that if you’re at the forefront of the issues in the world you are facing.

She thoroughly enjoys the process of understanding what they are as she works with some amazing people who are leaders in those fields. It keeps her unbelievably up to speed and relevant.

The Importance Of Reputation

In New Zealand, when Jaqui was doing her master’s degree in Russian Politics, she had a part-time job, and that was helping to research a book on the history of the New Zealand National Party, which is the equivalent of the liberal party here in Australia.

She got to interview and meet a lot of New Zealand's politicians and political leaders at quite a young age, and then she ended up working for the National Party for three or four years.

So she learned very early in politics that your reputation is mission-critical and, in the number of the people that she met and then worked with, just being in that environment makes you extraordinarily aware of the fact that you are public property in a lot of sense.

You can't just do what you want, when you want, and that was way before social media even.

From a very early age, she understood the power of presence and the importance of being able to clearly articulate to a wide audience what you needed to communicate.

Jaqui is very careful about who she works with and she’s also careful not to judge. She would make her own assessment based on her own values and what she genuinely believes she can bring to the project.

If she doesn’t think it’s right for her, she would say so very politely. In fact, she had turned down both corporate work and other projects based on that.

Jaqui says, "I think that's an important part of that reputation and relevance thing is that you need to be very clear about where you want to play because you can't spread yourself too thinly."

She has recently begun researching the concept of reputation economy: everyone has a reputation, and it is now digital and online, and it exists whether you actively manage it or not.

It’s really very important for people, particularly business people, but really anybody to be actively engaged in actually doing a Google search on themselves regularly to understand what their digital reputation is because it's out there and it might not be what you think it is.

Establishing Jaqui’s Values & Beliefs

Like most people, Jaqui’s foundational values also came from her parents, but she really didn’t think about her values at all until she had her son.

She thought now that she’s got the responsibility to grow a human being, she really spent a bit of time thinking what the values that she wanted to instill in him were. What were the ones that weren’t serving Jaqui anymore or might not serve her son?

That was the first time she really actively thought about what her values are and she noticed that some of them are different from her parents.

Then, she didn’t think too much about it again until we worked together on my book.

One chapter that really impacted her was chapter 2 of the book, where I talk a lot about values.

She actually went through the exercise that I suggested in the book about writing down what you think your values are and ordering and reassessing them. Some she moved on, and some she doubled down.

She says, "I think the act of actually consciously looking at what your values are is probably something most people don't do enough." 

Jaqui believes that her beliefs have shifted over time. She came from a very conservative local small town in New Zealand, and she didn’t really have much exposure to anybody that wasn’t like her.

She then ended up in Sydney, Australia and through learning, business, and interactions, she had to reassess a number of her beliefs.

She does a lot of work in the Middle East and she’s passionately interested in ancient Persian culture, so exploring other cultures deeply has required her to review and assess what some of her beliefs were. Some she holds firm to, and some have morphed over time.

Jaqui just read an article about the decline of Western liberalism, and for a very long time, she's been aware that Western liberal values are not the globe’s values.

There’s a whole range of different values and belief systems and she thinks that it’s really arrogant for us to think that there’s only one set that should apply to the world.

Jaqui believes that we would all do ourselves a great service in the community to be much more open to different beliefs and value systems.

She also believes that if you understand more about different cultures and systems, you will appreciate it way better someone else's perspective and also your own.

Tested Values & Beliefs

In business, Jaqui had to make some major decisions that impacted the revenue and profitability of her company.

She’s had to walk away from potential projects because the value system or the behaviour of the potential client were something that she couldn’t work with.

Jaqui always wanted to be able to walk with her head held high, so if anything didn’t feel right, she has regularly made decisions that have impacted her business because, for her, it was the right thing to do.

Separating Business Brand and Personal Brand

At the very top level, Jaqui’s business is not her name. She has a business called The Book Adviser and another business called Global Stories.

That said, those brands are out there, but most people would attach those brands to her personally.

So Jaqui’s about to make some changes in her business, so she’s not necessarily the key point person for that.

She hasn’t separated the two very successfully yet, but it was a very conscious decision she made when she established those brands.

In fact, she has two that are quite separate brands, and they perform different things, and, of course, her engagement with them is quite different.

Jaqui struggled initially to decide whether she’d have one brand or two. Completely different markets completely require different levels of knowledge and support.

So she thinks very clearly about what the potential client would want to see. How would they interact with that? What are they looking at as opposed to what does she want to sell?

It’s stepping out of her and looking at it from the potential client’s point of view.

So if you want a corporate history written, that’s Global Stories. If you want to develop a business book for yourself, that’s The Book Adviser.

It may be that her team absorbs them into one brand, but at the moment, they want to keep them a little bit separate to see how they go.

Having A Mentor

Jaqui feels very fortunate that people chose to mentor her, so she didn’t have to go out and see them.

When she was involved in politics, the head of the National Party identified her and brought her under their wing, which was great.

When she came to Australia, she formed a business with her business partner, who’s a very successful businessman.

He identified her when she was doing an interview with him for a book. He asked Jaqui at the interview if she’d be doing anything next.

She then replied that she’s not yet sure, but she has this idea to start a business. He then said he’d be happy to talk to Jaqui.

So she’s never actively sought a mentor, and she feels very fortunate that others saw something in her and offered their guidance.

But Jaqui highly recommends that people in the early stages or whatever stage they are in their career go find a mentor or somebody to give them independent, thoughtful support.

She says, "It's very hard to get out of your own way sometimes, and I think having somebody who's not a family member, who's not kind of emotionally connected with you in some way, is really valuable in terms of looking at what your strengths and weaknesses are, helping you identify what they are, having that discussion around values, and also helping you to identify what your goals are in life and then maybe how you might go and achieve them." 

Jaqui also had clients who ended up being her mentors, and that’s actually a great part of what she does.

She gets to meet amazingly interesting people, and some become great friends, informal mentors, or people you develop a closer relationship.

She’s also on the stage, where she now mentors some people as a way of giving back.

The Most Prominent Brand Jaqui Has Worked With

Jaqui mentioned that our working together taught her a lot about the whole branding space.

She’s in it but she’s never had the time to look into it more deeply and effectively, but that’s what she’s helping a lot of her clients do.

She mentioned that CommBank’s history was fascinating. Aside from interviewing all the senior management and board directors, she also interviewed Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and all the living reserve bank governors. Jaqui would love that project to just go on forever, meeting an array of really important individuals who have had a significant impact over time on all Australians.

She didn’t really know much about the banking and financial system when she started that project, and now she’s probably got 100 odd books on it, which go back to the beginning of Fibonacci and accounting.

She got interested in the ancient history of banking and finance. She went off on quite a few tangents and has an enduring interest in them now.

So, as a project, that one would be a standout for her just because the company and those individuals have and continue to have such an impact on the health of the economy and the wellbeing of our country.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

I was hoping Jaqui would actually mention that because I think that the financial system is a cultural shaper of the country, and it's been through an interesting journey over the last hundred years, and anything that a financial institution actually does not only impacts people's lifestyles and impacts the economy, but also impacts their mindset, or the way in which they want to live, work, and grow.

I don't think people actually recognise that, and that's why a history like that is critically important.

Obviously, it must have been a real privilege to actually be part of putting that together. It's a great recognition of Jaqui’s talent and expertise that we all know so well, and I’m very grateful for what she's been able to share with us today.

How to Build Your Personal Brand and Reputation | on the HR Think Tank Podcast

Earlier this month I sat down with Khai Ngo, CEO of VerifyNow on The HR Think Tank podcast and we discussed personal brand and reputation which is all in my book Brand New Brand You. Take a listen.

https://youtu.be/b7WuLexBI3A HR Think Tank Podcast

Brand Audit

7 tips on how to do a brand audit. Where you’re at with all aspects of your brand over the year and thinking about the year ahead. Standing out from the crowd. The dynamic of managing Brand you.

Tom Peters said, “All of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEO's of our own companies. Me incorporated. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called you.” 

Once you’ve created a personal brand, an audit is very important. 

What Is a Personal Brand?

A personal brand describes how individuals differentiate themselves and stand out from the crowd. 

By identifying and articulating their unique value proposition, whether they're a professional or whether it's their personal brand, they then leverage it across platforms with a consistent message and image to achieve a particular goal. 

Jeff Bezos says, “Your brand is what people say about you when you're out of the room.” 

A successful brand you has to be: 

• Unique

• Credible

• Consistent

• Relevant

Doing a Personal Brand Audit

Be prepared to think introspectively. Both internally and externally, and you may need to check in with colleagues, friends and family to test whether your self-assessment is accurate. 

You need to know yourself. What are your primary values and your secondary values? You must consistently live by your values across all facets of your life. 

1.    What is your purpose? Create your personal brand statement. 

2.    What is your area of expertise and your superpower? When considering your internal perceptions, you will want to ask yourself the following questions:

·      How do I want to be perceived? 

·      What do I want others to remember about me?

·      What are my strengths? 

3.    You need to know your audience. 

4.    You need to become the leader in your field. To make an impact in your field, you need to undertake a SWOT analysis. You should assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. 

5.    Take control of your image. As noted earlier, your personal brand exists in the minds of your audience and how they perceive you. First, create brand you guidelines for your photography, websites, your platform, and everything you want to do to protect yourself, whether it be in the social media industry, business, or LinkedIn. All of these are critical. Next, curate your website and workplace. 

6.    Engage and connect with empathy. Create a content marketing plan that you can execute. Engage genuinely on social media platforms you select. As a business owner, engage your past, current, and future clients and customers. 

7.    Build your community. Developing, building, and maintaining a brand requires a team of people. You need to work to build that network of people who are ready and willing to support you and spread your message. 

The Next Step

You need to understand your community: how are they relevant to you and you to them? 

You may already have these kinds of people around you. Consider who they may be: mentors, team members, clients, past and present fans, advocates, coaches, and role models. 

And who are you? Who do you provide support to in any of these capacities? 

Once you've answered these questions, prioritise those who would like to connect with you. 

Key Takeaways

Warren Buffett said, “We can afford to lose money, even a lot of money, but we can't afford to lose reputation—even a shred of reputation.”

Doing a personal brand audit will ensure that you remain true to your values and not deviate from your purpose.

Ensure that you’re in control of the image being put into the world, as that will influence people’s perception of you and, eventually, your reputation.

Inspiring the Younger Generation to Build Their Brand

Actively managing your personal brand is critical if you want to make a significant impact in the areas of your life important to you. What you say and what you do influences how people perceive you, so take note that your personal branding will determine how successfully you’ll be able to make an impact in life.

In January 2022, Professor Attila Brungs was appointed as University of New South Wales Sydney's incoming President and Vice-Chancellor. Attila Brungs was the former Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Technology Sydney. He was appointed to the role in July 2014. Attila has been a researcher in both industry and academia with interests in the area of heterogeneous catalysts. 

Attila is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales and an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. As Vice-Chancellor of UTS, he was instrumental in the university's rise to Australia's position among the world's top young universities, including supporting the transformation of the UTS campus with the addition of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building designed by Frank Gehry, the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology Building, the Vicky Sara building, and the UTS central building through a $1.5 billion campus master plan. 

Central to Brung’s approach at UTS has been collaboration, engaging with industry to tackle real-world research problems, and the community to tackle social justice issues. Under his stewardship, the university's commitment to delivering positive social good has been strengthened through the creation of UTS' social impact framework. Professor Attila Brungs is a senior leader in the higher education industry and a passionate advocate for innovation. 

He believes the universities not only have a responsibility to prepare students for the jobs of the future but also to help create jobs for them to go to. Attila grew up in Sydney and is married to artist Kate Gradwell and shares two children together. He is a member of the Sydney Sabre and UTS Fencing Club.   

Attila Brungs As A Brand

As a scientist, Attila doesn’t necessarily identify with the word brand. But based on conversations we’ve had before, how I define a brand and how Attila defines reputation, character, and authenticity are the same which is a much richer, fuller, more authentic and coherent understanding of self. 

So for Attila, his reputation as a scientist is incredibly important. Many things happened in his life. He’s got a broad range of interests. Things happen to him and he can’t control external circumstances.

“But what I can control is how I react to the world around me,” he says. “I can control what my aspirations are and I can control how I try and achieve my goals. And as we see, a lot of these are, “How can I make society a better place?”

There are so many things, particularly about the last two years that are entirely out of his control and as he becomes older and wiser he hopes he can have more wisdom.

Attila read a book once that says wisdom is knowing those things which you can change, and those which you can't change and the ability to tell the difference between them. 

Back to the conversation of reputation, scientists question the universe, they use evidence, they solve problems, and then they publish. 

They try and bring that knowledge to change and improve society. Now, unless they're trusted, unless they have a reputation, that becomes incredibly hard to do. That’s why he believes that reputation, authenticity, and character are very important.

According to Attila, perception is very important too. When you think about your reputation, when you think about your character, for Attila, perception becomes fact. 

As a scientist, he knows that there are facts and there are perceptions. But for him, to underestimate how other people view the world and what their perceptions are and to write them off by saying, “I know that this is X, the person may perceive it to be Y but it’s actually X,” is unhelpful because through their lens and their life experiences, they think it is something else and that's what their perception is. 

One of the most important things that Attila has found, particularly in leadership is how he makes sure that he’s trying to understand people's different backgrounds, their different characters and perceptions because that is critical in being able to connect and engage and communicate with people.

As we have seen in society recently, there’s a lot of debate around vaccines. According to Attila, saying to people they’re an idiot if they have problems with vaccines, because they may read on social media that a vaccine is a ‘Microsoft chip to control your brain’, is one of the worst things you can do. 

“Their perception is different to yours,” Attila says. “What we need to do is understand where they’re coming from, understand their perception, and understand the drivers and environments that help them get to their perception and then engage with it.”

As it relates to reputation, not only do you have to be mindful of being authentic and coherent in all your actions because, for Attila, the best way to manage your brand or your reputation is to be who you are, to be authentic, and to be coherent about that.

Attila then brought up one of my favourite quotes from Jeff Bezos, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

So for Attila, if you’re very coherent in your actions and it’s truly authentic, that’s how you influence people. It’s not just as simple as that though because as an example, he may act one way towards me and he may act exactly the same way towards his children. But his children and I have different worldviews, and so both of us will view his actions in a different way. 

Therefore, what he’s got to do, is work out if this action got this desired outcome, or he’s showing this part of his character which is authentic to him, he’s got to think of the best way of showing that to me. Similarly, when he showed it to his kids, it’s the same point but he may show it differently.

According to Attila, “Your words, your actions, and your values need to be perfectly aligned. But it’s not just as simple as making sure they’re aligned. If you want people to perceive all of their coherence, you’ve got to go to the next level of sophistication.”

As an example earlier, given that I and his kids are coming from different worldviews, if he acts this way towards me or acts this way toward his kids, do we both view what he’s trying to communicate? Maybe not, so he may have to do something subtly different but still authentic with him, his values, and his coherence so he can still connect with me or his kids in a slightly different way. 

Building Reputation

Attila has spent many years around students and young people aspiring to great careers and being ambitious. These students start off wanting to develop a career. 

They haven't got much of a reputation, they've actually got to build their brand first. So reputation is actually an outcome of them taking the steps to get there and Attila concurs with that.

Sometimes, parents get grumpy at Attila Brungs as the vice Chancellor. They say, “What should little Jane or Johnny do? Should they go with accounting or engineering because there’s a lot of jobs in that?” 

Well, what Attila asks them is, “What does Jane or Johnny passionate about? What do they really love doing? What can they throw their whole self into?” These questions should be the basis of some of the choices.

If someone comes to Attila and said they want to be an astronaut and they’re passionate about being an astronaut, he provides them advice that there aren’t many astronauts, particularly in Australia, so if someone wants to pursue it, they’ve got to be quite sophisticated as they go.

Attila thinks that one of the most important things is what you’re passionate about because that then carries from the job to different organisations you work for.

If we look at Attila’s career, there are certain values and aspirations that he has that he tries and uses his talents to help society that no matter where he goes, those are there.

How Others Perceive Attila

Particularly in Attila’s last couple of roles, as a leader, for him, one of the responsibilities of leadership (there are two) is to make sure you walk your talk.

So if he says this is important for UNSW, CSIRO, or for UTS and if he doesn’t live to those values and doesn’t project those things that are important for the organisation and important for the organisation to do to society, then they will immediately see a perceived coherence gap.

That doesn’t necessarily mean personally that he has to be exactly aligned with the exact same set of values of all the organisations he belongs to.

Say, for example, not all aspects of the character of UNSW are aspects necessarily in Attila’s character. He’s very aligned with UNSW’s values and a lot of them speak to his personal values that’s why he joined UNSW. 

It’s a similar journey with UTS because it thrives for a social purpose like UNSW and it’s something that speaks to him as well.

But as a leader, there are times when you need to think through this audience at this time and these issues facing us and ask yourself, “What part of my character do I need to maybe bring to the fore? What’s something that I need to focus on?”

Attila doesn’t necessarily manage his reputation or brand but what he does manage as a leader is what are the things in his character are important and when should they come to the fore.

The Importance of Reputation

What Attila recognises is how critical reputation is to the success that he wanted to have.

There are times that it’s safe to hide parts of your character, to fit in with the flow, or do things differently. 

Attila is a pragmatic person and he thinks sometimes, you have to compromise but there are things about yourself and your character that you got to be cohesive from one room to the next.

He considers himself fortunate because his father is also an academic, and his father had a reputation for being scrupulously honest, caring, and a good problem solver.

Attila observed how that reputation of being honest, caring, and a great problem solver assisted him in getting done what he needed to get done and how important that was. He then realised the importance of integrity in any role, specifically as a leader. 

His mother has also a reputation. Attila is the oldest of seven kids, so his mum had quite a challenge in raising and looking after them giving them all they needed. His values stemmed from his parents, his family, and his broader family and he’s grateful for that. 

His mother, he observed, would be herself in whatever company. She’s quite outgoing, she’s incredibly caring, and she could engage with people brilliantly. Just by being herself, she would disarm people and she could connect with people. She’s got that reputation for her authenticity and her integrity.

How Attila Established His Values

Attila is the eldest, but he has learned incredible lessons from his siblings and he continues to learn and get inspired by them throughout his life even when they were very young.

He remembered when his sister was only four, she taught Attila a really important lesson about life just because of how wonderful she was.

Attila’s values were formed early on and haven’t changed but his worldview has changed somewhat. How his values manifest themselves, and how they connect have somewhat changed.

He came from a particular cultural background (his mum is Hungarian) and he went to UNSW and he met people from so many different backgrounds and worldviews. 

He thinks that the way he views the world fundamentally shifted during his time at university. When he went to Oxford for a while he then again, met people from all around the world with different real world views, different perspectives, and different lived experiences. 

It gave Attila early on insight into how powerful true diversity of thought can be and the importance to have inclusive leadership which is making sure that everybody contributes to that diversity. 

Shifting Values

As Attila has gotten older, his tolerance increased. As a young man, he mentioned that he was intolerant, excited, and passionate.

Being passionate is a wonderful thing but sometimes passion can breed a little bit of stubbornness about what you want to do.

According to Attila, “I can’t necessarily say that my values have shifted, but we can see how values are manifested in behaviours. If you look at the underpinning value of respect, how we show each other today that we’re respectful, is perhaps quite different to 30 years ago.”

That's why coherence and authenticity are so important. For example, Attila can behave to me in a way that appears to be respectful. But if he goes around the corner and then relies on my character or acts to my disadvantage, he’s not being respectful in the slightest.

What really is the intent of people in terms of what they see as respect or lack of respect is becoming far more prominent in many of the social issues today.

What Attila thinks is wonderful in today’s society and in our universities, is the importance placed on how others regard your actions.

Let’s go back to what he said at the beginning that you got to know your character. How he acts with me, versus how he acts with his kids may be slightly different because he’s trying to make sure that we recognise that respect. 

Lost and Tested Values

Attila’s values have been tested a lot of times in both his career and home life. He has aspirations of trying his hardest. He said, “We do things that we regret throughout our lives. We wish we had done differently.” 

As a leader, he’s trying to be authentic. He would never say anything behind people’s backs. He will try to be open and transparent and make sure that his words, actions, and deeds are coherent.

According to Attila, “I believe that actions are so much more important than words. Unless you act in coherence with your values, it doesn’t matter what you say.”

In some respect, words are also important at times. But one of the things that he does particularly as a leader is that it’s very important to spark a wonderful team and to trust and give them autonomy.

But if something goes wrong, he’ll talk about it with them. But that’s on Attila and not them.

He remembered at one time in one of the divisions of CSIRO, it happened that something did go wrong with one team member, so Attila went back and fixed it.

Attila built this deep relationship with this division and they trusted him and that things were going well.

It would have been easy for him if he said “It’s just X. He’s new. Sorry about that. Let’s go on.” And that probably would have been fine and X wouldn’t have gotten in trouble and their relationship could have been stable.

But Attila took the responsibility and said, “I stuffed up and I did wrong.” That damaged his reputation in that division because he had a reputation for delivery, and he had failed to deliver. It took him a good six months to rebuild his reputation.

But Attila still thinks that even in hindsight or even on the surface he lost his reputation, what he did was still true to what he believes is important. 

So rather than acting in a different way to try and preserve his reputation in some respects, it was better to lose his reputation in that regard, because he remained coherent with what he believed his broader character is about.

Keeping the Brand Whole

Attila considers himself in a fortunate position in that he has certain aspirations around what he wants to do with his time and talents, and that he gets a choice of where he works.

So the choice he makes is to make sure that the organisation he works for has a core of very aligned values to what he thinks is important. Universities as a whole share a set of values as public institutions.

UTS is a university of a public institution that exists for social good and he said the same thing at UNSW, because he passionately believes it as well.

What attracted him to UNSW is similar to UTS. They have this passion for social impact. They put three pillars in their strategy which are excellence, research, and social impact. 

Attila said, “I'll only work in an organisation where there’s a very strong set of values but what’s different however is the way the two institutions are going around to deliver their missions which is great because then they’re complementary.” 

Next, what is important to the institution at that time? If we look at UNSW for example, there are aspects of what Attila thinks is important that he didn’t need to focus on at UTS, but he’s now focusing on UNSW because they regarded it more important than UTS did. 

So for him, it’s not about different values or even repositioning himself. It’s about if core values are very similar. It’s about which parts of the UNSW strategy they want to achieve. Does Attila need to provide support? Does he need to promote? Does he need to push?

Therefore, people will perceive him slightly differently from the Vice-Chancellor of UNSW to the Vice-Chancellor of UTS. He’s hoping that people will always perceive him as Attila regardless of where he goes but because he has a different set of priorities at UNSW than he did at UTS, naturally, people will look at him differently. 

How People See Attila Outside of His Profession

According to Attila, "Again, that goes back to our very first part of our why it's important just to be authentic, I have a broad set of interests, you have a broad set of interests, and parts of your character come out in different circumstances."

For example, when Attila is fencing, no one would see him as a professor or vice-chancellor. 18-20 years old who are so much fitter and more agile than him, crush him. They view Attila as a slightly old man who they like beating in fencing. So that’s one particular view of him.

He’s got another view of when he was a surf lifesaver. People viewed him as someone on the beach. His family also views him in a very different way. 

Even in the university, some parts of UTS knew him for years when he started more as a scientist on the research side, hence they viewed him as a fellow researcher.

Other parts would view him as vice-chancellor, and other parts view him as a friend.

Attila said, "So that's where the complexity of reputation - and it goes back to what we said right at the beginning, is it's not just about you being authentic, it's about how people are also viewing you and people will do to their own worldview, see different aspects of you, as authentic as it is that resonates with them.

People from UTS perceive Attila as a leader in the educational field and he’s hoping that people will similarly view him that way at UNSW. 

He wants to be viewed as their cheerleader for the wonderful staff, a colleague who will support to do their aspirations, and their champion outside the organisation because the vice chancellor’s role is very important because one of his roles is to talk to the government, talk to business, and be a real champion of the university's aspirations.’

Attila’s Mentors

Attila is very grateful that he has his parents, siblings, supervisors, teams, and people he met at work that have been his mentors.

He doesn’t deliberately mention any names, because he’s come to recognise how much he can learn from everybody around him.

He recognised how fortunate he is to always be in these rich and dynamic environments where there are lots of people around. And as long as he keeps his mind and heart open, he can learn from everybody around him regardless of what their role is.

The Value of Mentoring

Attila believes that having a mentor is so important. He encourages people to have mentors because mentors are super helpful but he doesn’t only do that. He also said, "To be generous to others, because if you're generous with your time, it's amazing what people can be back to you."

Attila has seen people be very mercenary about finding mentors and networking yet the people that he found the most successful are those who are generous. Because if you're generous to others and you build communities, you can draw on that community that can put you in a great position of resilience and strength.

Final Message and Outro

I want to thank Attila Brungs very much for taking the time to really share his wisdom and insights. 

Thank you for listening to this episode. Please leave a five-star review and subscribe for more episodes if you enjoyed it. 
If you'd like to learn more about developing your personal brand, please visit garrybrowne.com.au to get in touch or grab a copy of Brand New Brand You.

Maintaining Your Reputation and Integrity

Actively managing your personal brand is critical if you want to make a significant impact in the areas of your life important to you. What you say and what you do influences how people perceive you, so take note that your personal branding will determine how successfully you’ll be able to make an impact in life.

Welcome to the fifth episode of The Personal Brand Catalyst. Today we are joined by Tony Nash who started his first internet business in 1996. In 2004, Tony founded Booktopia, an online bookstore with an allocated budget of $10 a day.

The company's first book sold in three days. Fast track 17 years and Booktopia now sells one book every 3.9 seconds, with an annual turnover of over $220 million a year. 

It was listed in the AFR BRW Fast 100, eight times, the only company to achieve this feat and was voted book retailer of the year for the third time in 2019 at the Australian Books Industry Awards. 

One of the defining aspects of the business is its philanthropic program. So far, Booktopia has donated well over a million dollars in books and cash to literacy-based projects in Australia, including indigenous literacy, writers' festivals, readers' conferences, library fundraising projects, and book industry awards. 

In 2020, Booktopia was listed on the Australian Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of 315 million. 

Tony is an entrepreneur, founder and CEO in online retail with a background in recruitment, programming, business development, selling, SEO, and internet marketing

Tony has developed outstanding negotiation and leadership skills with a thorough understanding of sales and managing an outstanding executive team; has involved himself in capital raising, and listing now on the Australian Stock Exchange.

Self Identity As A Brand 

Tony considered “Tony Nash” as his brand and not Booktopia because same with any CEO or founder, he wants his business to have longevity beyond him.

It’s a role that when he steps down or resigns, Booktopia would continue to go on and therefore, he’s leaving it in trusted hands. That thinking is super helpful for him in terms of its growth over the years. 

Perception of Others

For Tony, others might perceive him as a success story because he’s done something that very few have done despite books being written off, bookshops closing, and Amazon’s going to annihilate you.

But it’s not just him or Booktopia employees or now shareholders, but also publishers, authors, and customers who participated in that success. 

The most appealing and exciting part of the whole Booktopia journey for Tony is that there’s very little expectation of what they were going to get to where they are today. It’s basically like achieving the impossible.

How Business Affected Tony's Reputation 

According to Tony, his career with Booktopia is like being an athlete or being on the field where people yell at you, yell at the referee, or yell at the competition. “Everything is just noise, so there’s an aspect of understanding what your purpose is and where you’re heading.”

He can only imagine playing the State of Origin, with so much crowd involvement even beyond those that are at the ground, to have the eyes of the eastern seaboard of Australia watching a specific game and then to be impacted by what people are saying and what social media are saying these days more than ever before. Those things didn’t ruffle Tony.

When asked about the speedbumps he encountered over the years, Tony mentioned that he’s getting speed bumps all the time even right now. In 2022, Booktopia’s share price has gone from just under $3 to $1.30, that’s a massive drop even lower than before.

The way Tony looked at it is, that everyone’s on the slide at the moment, so it’s not specifically about Booktopia. Ecommerce businesses are being repriced at the moment so he doesn’t feel like it’s a reflection on him or the business so his advice is that you need to be resilient and you got to be able to separate yourself from the speedbumps you encounter.

Building Credibility and Reputation in The Early Years

When Tony was around 30 years old, he had been approached by a financial planner to invest in an Australian film scheme that enabled them to invest as he films and then get a tax break. The tax break was really beneficial to do and you could borrow money to pay for it. Tony thought it was a good idea, so he got involved.

Then seven years later, the Australian Tax Office decided to stop that and retrospectively go back seven years and nullify all of the schemes. So in the end, Tony had worked out that he owed the Australian Tax Office $250,000.

At that time, he had sold his house and put all the money into his company and since the scheme was a personal and not a business thing, Tony found himself with a fair amount of debt. 

He was trying to pay it off but he got to a point in the early 2000s where he decided to just go bankrupt. He’s heard enough times that if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re going to go bankrupt at least once in your life and Tony saw that as liberating not because he no longer had to pay the Australian Tax Office $250,000. 

Personally, Tony didn’t think of himself as a failure or that he was going to have to hide his experience in the closet. 

He has many instances where he could think he’s hopeless or worthless because he got so many reference points to think that he’s worth nothing, but that’s not how he went about his daily work. 

Keeping The Reputation

Tony always felt that destiny was in his own hands. Only five years ago, his son was diagnosed with ADHD and he went on medication. His life transformed at school and socially with his friends, particularly with teachers that he was working with on a daily basis.

His wife was pretty sure Tony had it as well, so he went to an adult psychiatrist and they spoke about all the things that he’s accomplished in sport and Booktopia. A week later, the psychiatrist also had a conversation with his wife and then after that, it was confirmed that he definitely has ADHD.

When he got that insight about how he operated in the world, he has to consider that when asked about everything he went through because he was undiagnosed, so there were certain aspects to mental health and certain conditions, but Tony sees ADHD as a superpower.

ADHD serves him because when he finds something that he’s really passionate about, he just locks in and that’s something that he wants to do. It’s one of the reasons why Booktopia actually has been successful in the early years.

So to him, it's a superpower not that he knew that he had it then, but there was always this thing about him that he believes he’s going to rise out of the ashes like a phoenix. For him, it was always this sense of hope and possibility.

When Tony thinks about his son and perhaps others, the hallmark of ADHD is that you have this element that you’re not good enough. But when it came to accomplishing things or succeeding, you think that it was always like a quest to show the rest of the world that you’re not useless or unworthy.

Identifying And Establishing Tony’s Values

Tony thinks that a lot of our values are inherited from our parents and learned from our environment mostly through demonstrating and not necessarily through birth and pre-birth. So there’s the element of unpacking that over the years and understanding if it’s really serving you or if you want to be that person.

He remembered one time when he was quite young, he was the coach of a basketball team and a lot of people were watching. Tony’s mum and dad came along to watch the tournament and he just lost it with the kids. They were just not listening to what he was saying. 

Later on, when no one else was around, Tony’s mum said something like, “I’ve never been embarrassed all my life.” Taking that moment, he reflected on how he showed up in the world, if that’s the kind of person he wants to be, and if that’s how he wants to operate.

In his early 20s, Tony did something that not everyone does and that was he wrote a lot in his journals to try to understand things, do a lot of reflections, and do soul-searching.

How Tony Understands And Sees His Values And Principles

Tony remembered when he was about 14 or 15, he told his mom he was going to be famous and his mum said she couldn’t think of anything worse. It’s quite an odd thing for him to hear, given that he had an ambition at that young age.

He remembered, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ by Dale Carnegie, was a book that he read all the way through oddly enough back then. He had worked in sales, worked in a HIFI shop, and sold computers but he wasn’t doing a very good job on those works. He ended up in recruitment and he did really well. He enjoyed selling and listening to people like Tom Hopkins and Anthony Robbins. 

What he did end up doing was travelling around the world for three and a half years and living in London. He was working in a recruitment company and he was just walking through a corridor when he picked up on a conversation between two people about a course called the Landmark Forum.

Tony ended up going on that and doing that for over two weekends, and it really blew his mind in terms of the way that he operated in the world.

He did lots of different workshops and worked on himself over the years. He enjoyed challenging himself by looking at his values, his beliefs, and the way that he operated and then taking what he learned in all those workshops out into the world.

Tony’s Tested Values

Tony shared one scenario where his values were tested and it’s a good one for him that it wasn’t in the work environment. But when it was thrown at him, it really made a huge difference in his life.

So he was doing a workshop years ago and there was a process that they were doing that you had to get into teams. 

Tony was really motivated and he was willing to give his 100% like he always does. When their team got five, one of the guys in the group said to him that he didn’t want Tony to be on the team and he thanked the guy for his honesty.

There was a part of the process where you had to understand and demonstrate the word ‘integrity’. Tony put up his hand when they got to that part and asked for a dictionary to read the definition of integrity because he didn’t understand what the word meant.

When he went back two months later to participate in the group that was now like the graduate of the course, the guy that said he didn't want Tony on the team, was on his current team.

Tony asked the guys in a nice way why he said he didn’t want Tony on the team prior and the guy answered because he didn’t think Tony had any integrity. Tony agreed with him because he had no idea what it was before.

So, after that, he went out and started to try and find people that had integrity. He saw videos of Martin Luther King and others who may have had it. Lo and behold, a few years later, people spontaneously said that they love Tony’s integrity. That was a value that he had no idea about, but he was able to pursue it and own it.

For Tony, it’s your choice whether you want to have integrity, whether you want to have trust, or whether you want to carry whatever it is that you have. Therefore, there are so many values that he has today that he definitely did not have all those years ago.

I think one of the big challenges of younger people today is not understanding what their values are. I talk very much about trying to get young people to document and write down what their values are because it will stand them in good stead for the future.

I would have a guess that there would be a small percentage in the population that would do what Tony has done which is to understand what integrity is because I'm not sure people can actually go and identify it. 

So specifically, as Tony has articulated, which I think makes him quite unique in that regard because to go out and try and identify what integrity is and go and see working examples takes a lot of focus, attention, and time. I really applaud Tony for it and that it is a value that is not shared by the masses. It is a particular type of value that is critically important certainly in business as well.

How Tony Maintains His Relevance In Different Circles Of Life 

When it comes to storytelling, Tony learned that knowing when you’ve said so much is an important part of being a CEO or a visionary. It's about a fine line between really taking them on a journey, but at the same time, not talking beyond. There were so many times this happened where he needed to be on point talking to the fund managers because their attention span is short. But it’s a little bit different with the Booktopia team because they’re investing a lot of their own personal future and their career in the company.

Having A Mentor In Life 

Tony didn’t really have a specific mentor. Obviously now he’s got a chairman and other board members. But on an internal journey, he believes that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of questions you asked. So Tony has been asking questions of anyone across the industry or whether it’s in the financial markets, but there’s never been somebody he could say his counsel or his mentor.

He remembered when he was starting his own company, he decided to consult with Brian Sher since he's pretty good at marketing. He paid him $1,500 and spent lots of one hour with him but Tony realised he knew more than him.

The best thing that he got out of doing that was the confidence within him to go out there and create and manifest what he needed to do. He didn’t need to have somebody with their own experience advising and paying out money for them to do that.

What Tony got from his conversation with Brian that served him very well was his advice, “Don't worry about your profit and loss. Don't worry about your balance sheet. Just focus on your cash flow.”

 It’s worth every penny for Tony. The biggest mentor he has now is his wife, his CEO at home. Of course his parents and many other people but not to the level where he says, “That’s my coach.”

Tony Being a Brand

Tony has a little story that he tells people, which he tries and gives entrepreneurs some insight into how his brand worked for him and how it served him as a leader of a company. 

“Imagine you're in a Maserati, and a Maserati is an Italian sports car. Of course, as Italian sports cars are prone to do, they need to sometimes end up in the workshop with the mechanic and the mechanic on this particular day when you drop the Maserati off gives you the loaner and the loaner is a two-door 15-year-old Fiat.

So, off you go in the loaner which you're used to taking and this particular day, you've got a very important client meeting down the Double Bay or Toorak or wherever you are in which city and you've got to get to this appointment because it’s a big and important deal. 

And you think to yourself, “I'm just going to park onto the back streets”. But lo and behold, on this particular day, there are no parking spots in the back of the back streets of Double Bay.

So there's only one spot in front of the restaurant where you've got to take because on time is on time and late is late and so you take that spot and you get out, get out of the car.

As you're getting out of this two-door, 15-year-old Fiat, you see your new client, they see you and they're looking at the car. You've got to be able to get out of that car as you.

Just because you're getting out of that car is no reflection on how that meeting is going to go. The fact that you can get out of that car and be present without any judgment or any kind of negative energy around that is super important.”

Tony states that you are not your spouse, you're not your kids or your kid’s academic results. You are not your company and you have got to be able to have that separation to be able to look at the business as its own organism, as its own individual thing and you are not it.

Tony recalls in the very beginning when he started Booktopia, he was in his apartment walking past the room where he’s worked on his business and he stopped dead in his tracks because all of the sudden, he heard the heartbeat of the business.

It took him by surprise when he remembered when it crawled, he remembered when it took its first steps, he remembered when it went to kinder for a day, for a week when it went to primary school and high school then to university and became its own individual self. 

If Tony projected his beliefs and values onto the Booktopia business, it wouldn't be a business turning over a quarter of a billion dollars. It would be probably turning over 30 million because it would have had to stay within his own values and my belief systems.

When Tony was working in the recruitment industry in the early days he attended a course and he had 15 contractors working for him, then he dropped back down to 11, and then he got it to 15 and then dropped back down to 11 again.

It was so frustrating for him that he just couldn’t break through the 15. Tony went into one workshop called Money and You Australia. He went there because he thought it was about making money but it was actually about the “YOU”. He got some insights and some clarity of thinking that within 3 months of finishing that course, he was at 30 contractors because he’s cracked through it. He let go of some beliefs and values that weren’t serving him.

Then he got stuck at 30,  but then he went back and did another course and found some more things that he got to 45, and then he got stuck there. At the end, Tony ended up with 130 contractors working for him, which as a result served Booktopia very well, all because he’s never overlaid his beliefs or his identity or who he is on the business. 

He allowed it to flourish and it’s super important for entrepreneurs or any business owners or leaders of companies to understand that because that will only stymie the business.

Final Message and Outro

As I say the best way to get control is to give it up and allow the business to flourish and really develop. Tony Nash had articulated with his Maserati story, basically being able to have the courage to stand up and say who you are, not what you do and be strong enough with your own brand and I think he’s demonstrated that so succinctly. 

It's a great way to end the discussion that we've had today. I just want to say thank you so much for Tony’s wonderful storytelling and his anecdotes. They’re just so insightful and I've learned a hell of a lot from him. 

Thank you for listening to this episode. Please leave a five-star review and subscribe for more episodes if you enjoyed it.

If you'd like to learn more about developing your personal brand, please get in touch or grab a copy of Brand New Brand You. 

It Takes a Lifetime to Build a Personal Brand and 5 Seconds to Destroy It

While your reputation is, in essence, what others think of you, you have a lot of control over what influences their opinion.

As Richard Branson so aptly states, ‘All you have in life is your reputation: you may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, then you’ll never be happy. The thought will always lurk at the back of your mind that people don’t trust you.’ 

Your reputation comprises formal and informal factors, which we’ll discuss in more detail. 

Formal Factors

Official qualifications from recognised institutions and endorsements from powerful people are formal factors that form part of your reputation. These things hone your skills. 

In Outliers: The story of success by Malcolm Gladwell, he creates the 10,000 hours argument. You put a lot of time and effort into learning and developing your skills behind the scenes before you can apply them. Think about the Beatles: they played to different audiences in Hamburg around eight hours a night before they decided they were prepared to venture further afield.

While it certainly is doable to become a highly regarded leader without formal qualifications or institutional recognition, it is still the exception. In most fields, tertiary education is an important start.

Some institutions are regarded as having a higher level of recognition or value than others. That is, a business degree from Harvard, Oxford, MIT, London School of Economics, Cambridge, or INSEAD is recognised more highly than a degree from a smaller university that isn’t as well known. 

Here are some examples more relevant in the Australian context:

• the Australian Institute of Company Directors

• the CEO Institute

• CEDA (Committee for Economic Development of Australia)

• TEC (The Executive Connection)

• YPO (Young Presidents Organization)

• the Lowy Institute

• the Business Council of Australia

• Rotary

• the Private Wealth Network

Informal Factors

The informal factors of your reputation are those that you establish yourself on a personal level, namely your values and actions.

As Henry Ford says, ‘You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.’ You need to establish your values and constantly maintain them through your actions.

Here are some ways to take action on your values:

• Stay true to your word and do what you say you will. The best way to gain people’s trust is by being reliable and dependable.

• Have a mindset of helping other people realise their potential and reach their goals. Go above and beyond thinking about yourself and your own advancement.

• If you exceed people’s expectations, you will be noticed. Doing so will make you stand out as a positive role model.

• Show and operate with integrity. Fight for the good and stand up against what is wrong.

• Be consistent in the performance of your values. Steady and reliable behaviour leads to predictable actions.

• Engage with your community by getting to know people. Be available to give back your time and resources.

• Be thoughtful about your actions. Before you act, think about whether you’re proud of who you are and what you’re doing. Is what you’re doing worthy of your best self?

• Take responsibility for your actions and be accountable for your mistakes and failures.

Key Takeaways

Everything you say and do in your life impacts your personal brand, and in turn, your reputation.

Some of these things we can control. The formal factors that influence your reputation include your qualification and from which institution.

The informal factors are also up to you to control, but they can be more difficult as they take continuous work to maintain. A simple slip-up can damage a reputation that has taken years to build.

A great way to maintain the informal factors of your reputation is by thinking before speaking or acting. If you wouldn’t want those words or actions to appear in a newspaper, rather don’t say or do them.

Standing Out In The Crowd In a Meaningful Way

Actively managing your personal brand is critical if you want to make a significant impact in the areas of your life important to you. What you say and what you do influences how people perceive you, so take note that your personal branding will determine how successfully you’ll be able to make an impact in life.

Welcome to the fourth episode of The Personal Brand Catalyst. Today we are joined by Dr Charlie Teo AM, who has been instrumental in the development, dissemination, and acceptance of the concept of keyhole, minimally invasive techniques in neurosurgery. 

Dr Teo runs a fellowship program that attracts over 600 applicants yearly and has trained many of the world's leading figures in neurosurgery. He has trained neurosurgeons at distinguished centres such as the Barrow Neurological Institute, John Hopkins, Yale, Duke, Stanford, Vanderbilt, and Harvard universities. 

He has published over 160 peer-reviewed journal articles, has authored two books on keyhole approaches to brain tumours, and has featured as a guest editor for several journals. Dr Teo strongly believes that a surgeon's responsibility to his patients shouldn't end after surgery. 

In keeping with his desire to find cures for recurrent brain tumours, he has raised over $40 million which has been used to fund research and scientists, both in Australia and internationally.

It's such a great honour and privilege to speak with him today.

Self-Identity As a Brand 

Charlie Teo never deliberately thought of himself as developing a brand. He doesn’t see his reputation now as being a reputation of a brand or a reputation of a single solitary person.

But can the term “brand” be aptly applied to the name Charlie Teo? For him, it can be. But he never really thought about it as a brand.

Perception of Others 

Despite the controversial media in the last two to three years about Dr Teo, people would still come up and voice their strong passionate support for him no matter where he goes.

It is possible because they see him as a neurosurgeon, as a father of four children, and as a voice for voiceless animals. 

He thinks they see Dr Teo as a whole, as an entity and he believes he has turned into a brand. He thinks people see that brand is something that's worth congratulating him over and something that's worth supporting.

Using the Identity for the Foundation

Dr Teo’s previous foundation was called The Cure Brain Cancer Foundation. 

He specifically and deliberately requested that it not have anything to himself, he mentioned, "I didn't want a charity to die when I died and I felt the two could happen simultaneously".

Secondly, he knows that he polarises people and he didn't want the charity to polarise the community. So he specifically said he didn't want his name to be associated with any of his. 

The Cure Brain Cancer Foundation became the peak body for raising money for brain cancer research and weren’t going to disband when they asked Dr Teo to leave.

A lot of people would have disagreed with what was happening at The Cure Brain Cancer Foundation, but Dr Teo knows they would have wanted to have supported him, rather than an institution. 

So he had to come up with a name for a foundation that would then make sure that people knew that he was no longer associated with The Cure Brain Cancer Foundation.

Dr Teo affirmed an earlier point in the conversation that the people who think or strive to define themselves by their vocation, looks, celebrity status, and wealth, are going to fall flat on their faces once they lose it all because it's all about developing a brand by yourself.

Importance of Reputation

When Dr Teo started off in his career, his reputation was very important to him. 

Whether he was a good neurosurgeon or not in terms of his operative skills and his clinical skills, he wanted people to know that he cared and that he was in medicine for the right reasons. 

His intention wasn’t to become the world's best neurosurgeon or do the most difficult cases. Instead, he was simply going to treat his patients with respect. He was going to treat them in the same way that he would want someone to treat him as a patient. 

Most of the moral codes he lives by are incredibly simplistic and were given to him by his mother. Some of the codes he learned are, “Treat other people the way you would like them to treat you”, “Everyone got some value to give you”, “Don't think you're any better than anyone else” and so much more.

Values Being Tested

When asked where his values tested in his career and life, he said that it’s happening now.

Dr Teo loves neurosurgery so much, but he is unable to in practice it  Australia because he’s had his privileges taken off him. 

However, some people are willing to let him back in again on the condition that he ‘tows the party line.’ Everyone is telling him he should because at least he can start operating again. That way, he’ll be able to help some people as opposed to helping no one.

But according to Dr Teo, the only person who’s going to be damaged by taking on difficult cases is him and not other people.

The struggle he has with making that decision is whether he should become part of the fold because he can help some people or lose his self-respect.

But by standing by his moral code and disregarding professional political correctness, Dr Teo has developed a brand now that has been incredibly robust. 

And if there’s a lesson he wants to share with young people, it’s that, "To make decisions based on what is right for the greater good. Not what might be politically correct. Not what might get you a promotion at work. Not what might fill your banks with more money. Do what is right and in the long run, it will come back to reward you."

Brand As a Doctor

Dr Teo is a doctor in practice and in name, but he doesn’t think that he’s a doctor in brand. Simply because he’s shown integrity, stood by his beliefs and shown dogged perseverance. He believes these are the reasons why people support him, and not so much that he’s a skilled or talented surgeon.

Having a Mentor in Life

As a child growing up without a father, Dr Teo tried to look for father figures. If you read the book on his life ‘Life in His Hands; the True Story of a Neurosurgeon and a Pianist’, he talks about finding John Wayne as a father figure at one stage.

But apart from John Wayne, there was a school prefect called Nguyen Cameron who he held in high esteem because he showed kindness to Dr Teo. 

And then when he started surgery, there are a few doctors who he can identify specifically who were role models and helped him develop the code that he lives by now. 

One of them was Tony Milne, a pediatric surgeon in Brisbane, and he taught him the importance of questioning dogma and not blindly accepting everything that your professor told you. 

Another mentor he had was Mark Shanahan, who was a cardiothoracic surgeon at St. Vincent's Hospital in the era of Victor Chang. He taught Dr Teo the importance of perseverance and sheer tenacity when things seem to be going from hell to high water and losing control. 

And then in Johnston, Northern Territory, there was a neurosurgeon who showed him amazing intellect and how important it was to offer your patients not only compassion and surgical skill but also the importance of reading the literature and being scientifically up to date. 

These have been people along the way that have added to Dr Teo’s mum's general body of moral codes and have guided him to become the person he is today.

Charlie Teo As A Mentor 

Dr Teo has always wanted to be a teacher. When he was younger, he was a black belt in karate and enjoyed teaching more than actually sparring with the other students.

He won the best teacher award both in America and Australia but unfortunately, given the climate in Australia, he hasn’t been given the opportunity to teach. 

But Dr Teo has a fellowship (which he considers his family) of neurosurgeons from all around the world wanting to learn his techniques that he accepts every year he takes out all his teaching frustrations on them and passes his skills. 

Learnings and Insights to Share For Young People

The advice that Dr Teo wants to share the most, especially for young people is, “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”

He says, “At the end of the day, you've got to sleep with yourself, you've got to have self-respect, and you got to be proud of what you do.  

It’s so easy to say what is meant to be said and do what is meant to be done even though you know it's the wrong thing to do or the wrong thing to say because there is an immediate reward for doing that. You get promoted, you get the deal, you seal the contract, you tell a lie, and you managed to get some extra funding for it or whatever but don’t be ever tempted because it will come back to bite you.”

Dr Teo says other people call it karma, others call it God, the universe, or mother nature. But whatever others may call it, we are the sum total of our actions.

“You may feel alone at times or you might feel it’s difficult but at the end of the day, being a good person and doing things for the greater good will build your brand. It’s going to give you respect from others and more than anything else, it’s going to give you self-respect and pride for what you’ve done.”

Final Message and Outro

I want to thank Dr Charlie Teo very much for taking the time to really share his wisdom and insights. 

Thank you for listening to this episode. Please leave a five-star review and subscribe for more episodes if you enjoyed it. 

If you'd like to learn more about developing your personal brand, please visit garrybrowne.com.au to get in touch or grab a copy of Brand New Brand You. 

How to Build and Maintain Reputation and Relevance

Actively managing your personal brand is critical if you want to make a significant impact in the areas of your life important to you. What you say and what you do influences how people perceive you, so take note that your personal branding will determine how successfully you’ll be able to make an impact in life.

Welcome to the third episode of The Personal Brand Catalyst, where we are joined by Matt Levy, who was born 15 weeks premature with cerebral palsy and vision impairment. He has survived 50+ operations, including brain, heart, lung and ears. 

 Today he is an international swim star, having competed in five consecutive Paralympics - winning three gold, one silver and five bronze medals. He swam at five World Championships and countless nationals and other professional meets and holds 120 international medals and four world records. 

 Matt has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia and is an ambassador for Australia Day, Westpac, International Disability Day, Life's Little Treasures, Athlete Leader Swimming Australia and on an advisory board for the Institute of Sport and Commonwealth Games Australia. He’s a board member of Rainbow Club Australia Ability Options and the governance officer for the Australian Swimming Association, and countless other organisations. 

 What a pleasure and privilege it is to have the opportunity to speak with him today.

Self-Identity as a Brand

Matt sees himself as a brand from the sporting and ambassador side, but he just sees himself as “Matt Levy” when he’s going to work in his normal day job. He says it's about wearing two hats and having a different mindset for each.

 It's a really beautiful approach because many people don't have that understanding of exactly what their brand is. I think that he’s really encapsulated what people perceive him as, but also what he does, as being part of his brand. 

The Concept of Reputation 

Matt says his reputation is a byproduct of what he’s been able to do and achieve and not necessarily why he does what he does.

 He has always wanted to make a difference and show the community out there that you can do anything you set your mind to, no matter if you think you can or you think you can't. It's about having that attitude when taking the first step.

 While his parents instilled those values and beliefs early on, being born with a lot of challenges and having to overcome them taught him not to take any opportunity for granted and that you can learn a lot from anything, whether it's negative, positive or indifferent. 

 For Matt, it’s really about having fun in what he does, whether it's in sport or outside of it. He uses his experience and what he’s learned to inspire the next generation, and reputation is a byproduct of that.

Establishing Values

Because his values were instilled in him at a young age, Matt says he’s more on autopilot these days and lives his values naturally. He does think about it subconsciously to an extent, working on what's going to give him the best benefit and what's going to allow him to keep moving forward.

 He says that improving is what he thinks about on a daily basis: “I'm living these values and I'm doing XY and Z. How can this activity move me forward and keep me improving and moving in the right direction?”

Making the Right Decisions according to your Values and Beliefs

Matt recalls that in 1999, he was at a swimming carnival and had just finished his race and went off to play in the play equipment. By then it was time to get back on the bus and at this time he didn’t have a cell phone - so he ended up being stuck at Olympic Park, which was around 70km from his house.

 That moment started him on the journey of growing his mindset, figuring out things for himself, and taking that first step - he had to work out how to get home by himself. He didn't know what bus or train to catch and didn't know anyone there. 

 He realised that he had one of two choices: he could crawl up into a ball and cry, or he could do what had to be done to get home. 

 It took him three to four hours of asking strangers for help, but he made it home safely in the end. And this became a defining moment in his life, reminding him that sometimes the hard choice is the right choice.

Imparting Wisdom and Knowledge to the Younger Generation

Matt is less the type of person who talks to individuals and tells them what he’s done and how he’s done it, but rather leads from the front by showing them his actions. 

 We all do things in different ways, and each individual is trying to find their own way to build their brand and work out how they can move forward in life. 

 Matt may do something in his life that improves him, but that specific thing might not work for someone else. But, he says that everyone should strive to find that little bit of inspiration from someone that might help them move forward in their own journey. 

Taking Adversity and Turning it Into a Positive

With COVID, everyone has had that feeling of adversity in some way, whereas previously, everyone just went about their normal lives. So people are more empathetic to the fact that life isn’t always rosy and there are plenty of challenges along the way.

 This has given people another focus and made them look at themselves and look at what their purpose is in life. 

The Influence of Training in Different Aspects of Life

The skills that Matt has learned from his sport such as goal setting, discipline and mindset help build resilience and attitude, but also what you want to deliver from a reputation and brand perspective as well. 

What we do in life is echoed by what we learn, what we've done from experience and everything Matt has learned through his sporting career he has translated into his corporate life, too.

Building your Network and Connections

Matt started building his LinkedIn gradually from 2008. That’s where he prefers to share what he’s learned throughout his life, rather than what he’s done and how he’s done it. He focuses more on sharing insights because he doesn’t like to relieve his adversity and what he’s been through

In his book, he shares his key concept of success by emphasising the journey to get there. Matt believes that because we're only here for a short period of time, we might as well use the platforms we have while we're here. 

If you can change one person's view on life, then you've done a good service to the community.

Matt’s Philosophy and Approach to Expanding his Career Outside of Swimming

Matt always aimed to grow in other areas because swimming wouldn’t pay the bills, but it’s taken him many years to learn to balance swimming and working life. 

Things have been better since he’s been at AS in Canberra because everything is on-site. He doesn’t have to travel Sydney traffic for an hour and a half each day. 

He says that the biggest and most important thing as an athlete and as a human is recovery. So it’s not so much the training side of things, but the recovery and the rest from each session and making sure your mind’s not going a million miles an hour for 24 hours a day. 

Next year is the Commonwealth Games and that's definitely a big focus, but there comes a time when there's an end date. The aim is to end your career on your own merit and your own note rather than someone finishing it for you. So keep going while you're enjoying it. 

Matt’s Intention Behind Writing his Books

Matt consciously wrote his books to enhance his brand to an extent, but once he got into the process of writing it, it was more about wanting to make a difference to whoever read it and to be able to change their way of thinking and change what they do. 

He aims to change people's perception and understanding by imparting his knowledge and expertise on what he’s done in his life as opposed to promoting himself. 

Success doesn't come easy and it doesn't mean that you will win a gold medal or come first in a race. It’s about learning through that experience. Success to Matt isn’t about TV or winning medals. It's about improving what he did the day before and getting that message across to the reader more so than anything else. 

Being a Mentor

If people want to hear Matt’s experience and what he’s done, he’s happy to share it, but he doesn’t specifically mentor people. 

He says that things have been much easier during COVID thanks to Zoom. He prefers doing keynotes and speaking and releasing books from a mentorship side of things as opposed to one-on-one, because he has a full-time job, and then also swimming on top of that, and a couple of board roles. 

Matt’s Advice for the Younger Generation

Matt says that it's really about finding what your passion is and then working out where you want to go from there. That’s how he started back in 2000, wanting to go to a Paralympic Games class or the Paralympics in Sydney. 

He emphasises listening to the people around you because you're not going to get there by yourself. You're going to need a village.

Learn where your limits are and know what you're capable of. Don’t kid yourself about what you know and what you can and can't do. Being open and honest with yourself is how you really get the best out of it. 

It’s very hard to stand out from the crowd, but you can certainly stand out from what you were previously - even a day ago or two days ago.

Final Thoughts

I want to thank Matt Levy very much for taking the time to really share his wisdom and insights. 

 Thank you for listening to this episode. Please leave a five-star review and subscribe for more episodes if you enjoyed it. 

 If you'd like to learn more about developing your personal brand, please visit garrybrowne.com.au to get in touch or grab a copy of Brand New Brand You.

Relevance

To be relevant to someone or an organisation, you need to understand what is of utmost importance to them. 

Just as with a consumer brand or service, a brand must deeply understand what the customer wants. 

It’s essential to fully grasp the value of relevance, as it is by your relevance that you can make an impact. 

It's what you can do, not what you are, the notion of being something, not someone. 

Why Relevance is Important

The more relevance you have, the more opportunity you have to influence and make an impact for the better. People who seek you out are more open and willing to listen to your ideas and implement them. 

The value of relevance is in the ability to make an impact at scale. For example, you might want to change something about your community, your company, the city, or the world, and we all know there are plenty of things that need changing. 

How You Can Use Your Relevance

Let's take something that impacts us all, like climate change. You might want to do something to help make this change. Still, without relevance you're probably limited to recycling at home, working in the community garden, signing petitions - all worthwhile efforts, but they have little impact. 

Conversely, if you're a scientist and you have become actively engaged in scientific, public, and governmental discussions and policymaking over a period of time, you'll become more relevant and make a larger impact. 

The value of relevance can also be seen in the workplace. The more relevant you are in whatever area you want to make an impact on, the more impact you can make.

Managing Your Reputation

You can be relevant at a point in time but also over a period of time. With a consumer brand, a consumer usually wants a car or television that is top of the range for a short period of time. If you're a car brand or a television brand, you are relevant at that time when the customer has the need… And then it's gone. 

Similarly, with our personal brand, the skill sets and reputation you have are often only relevant to people when they're focused on a specific outcome or goal they want to achieve.

Relevance at a moment in time is about being visible and on top of your game when the moment occurs. 

How To Maintain Relevance Over Time

In different parts of our lives and in our various circles, we fluctuate between being more and less relevant and therefore have more or less impact. 

For the purpose of exploring relevance over time, we've chosen four key areas: 

• family,

• business,

• community,

• and our country.

At any given point in time, your relevance to each of these areas is different, and your travel pathways are also different. 

Maintaining your relevance takes a conscious effort. More importantly, it requires a level of self-reflection and emotional intelligence, leading to a deeper exploration of the real purpose in life. 

As Simon Sinek has captured in his now-iconic Ted talk about leadership, we need to start with the “why.” 

How Great Leaders Inspire

I'd suggest Roger Federer is the master of relevance over time. He's built up a highly recognised personal brand and mastered relevance at a point in time through Grand Slams and winning time and time again. 

While his relevance may be changing over time due to his age, his performance at a point in time has extended his relevance 

Separately, but connected, are his strong values that underpin his reputation and he's linked with sponsors who share those values. 

Key Takeaways

You can achieve relevance by understanding what people want and providing for that need.

Once you have relevance, you have more opportunities to influence people and make a difference for the better.

The difficulty lies in the fact that you’re often relevant for a certain time, so you need to build up your reputation to maintain your relevance over a longer period.

The best way to do this is to highlight your values, make them visible as part of your brand, and stick to them fiercely.