Here we are with another Talk Marketing and this week it is The Brand Therapist Michelle B Griffin.

If you are thinking about your personal brand, and Lord knows you should be in 2023, you will find this episode especially useful.

You can find out more about the brand therapy and strategy that Michelle provides on her website: https://michellebgriffin.com/

Martin Henley : [00:00:00] Today's guest is a graduate of Florida State University with a Bachelor of Science in Advertising and a master's in public relations. So she is certainly qualified to speak to us. She has spent most of her career with the Windstorm Insurance Network, where she was chief marketing officer and then executive director. She has also been a certified marketing guide with Storybrand. She is currently standby, part of the LinkedIn Creators Creator Manager Program, co-founder of the LinkedIn Branding Community, co-host of the LinkedIn Branding Podcast, founder of Thought Makers, host of the Personal Brand Therapy Show Podcast, LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn audio show host and is the brand therapist speaking and running corporate workshops. She is the co-author of the LinkedIn Branding book and is currently writing her second book around her seven-step brand process. What You May Not know about her is that she has done the splits every day for the last ten years. Today's guest is nodding enthusiastically. Today's guest is Michelle B. Griffin today, which is if people haven't got it from the introduction, we're talking about personal brand. Um, and this is kind of what interests me about personal brand is the idea that. Especially in sales. So what interests me is the difference between what you are and what you want to present yourself as being. I don't know. Do you know Frank Prendergast?

Michelle B Griffin: [00:01:43] Yes, I'm familiar with that name. Yes.

Martin Henley : [00:01:45] You're familiar with the name? Yeah. He also talks about personal brand and storytelling. His definition of personal brand was it's about being known for the things that you're good at, making sure you're known for the things that you're good at. It seems to me that it's also about being known for the things that you really want to be known for or being better at. This idea of forming better habits, being a better person. So if, for example, we're probably going off a little bit previously here, but if, for example, you're a salesperson, you want to build a personal brand, There's no mystery to what people want from a salesperson, to be really knowledgeable, to be reliable, to be those things. So maybe the opportunity then is just to be more of that. I mean, actually to evolve to be that person. I think you do that in the way that you're not quite talking about, but in forming really good habits, just getting on a streak. Maybe I'm going to do it very shortly with a spreadsheet. I want to do these 12 or 14 things a day and I'm going to start marking off in a spreadsheet when I do it. So hopefully I can get to a point where I can say, Oh, I've done this thing for ten years to people.

Michelle B Griffin: [00:02:55] Yeah, that is part of your brand. I think personal branding is parallel to personal development, right? I mean, we want to keep growing and getting the best of us, the real us. Now, I want to caution, you know, there's a lot of people who push back on personal branding because they think it's the made-up version of us. No, this is just us. The best part of us, the real us. How you are online, offline and personal development. You want to keep building that to keep growing. A brand doesn't, you know, stop just like we don't, hopefully. Right. So personal development is so key because you're learning so many things and you're growing and you're evolving. But I know that street building is how I keep growing and doing things and succeeding because we all have our ways and mine. I actually have a street builder. Um, it was actually based on a blog post by, you know, the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. You're familiar with that book. It's like a phenomenal.

Martin Henley : [00:03:55] I mean, I've heard of it, but I haven't read it. Yeah.

Michelle B Griffin: [00:03:58] Oh, it's good. Well, he had a blog post about You've heard of chameleon comedian Jerry Seinfeld, right? Everyone has. Yeah. Okay. So back in the day when Jerry Seinfeld would write jokes before he got a show, he actually did like, I got to write a joke every single day. So he bought one of these ginormous wall-sized calendars, 365 days. And every day he'd take a red marker, huge red, those stinky red markers, you know, those gross ones that have that weird smell. And he would make a big fat red streak through it. And so every day he'd write a joke and good or bad, he wrote it. And it just kept ingraining in him the process. And every time you do something, you're going to get a little bit better. And so that is how I envisioned for me to grow my brand.