Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance. The CFO role is changing rapidly, moving from cost controller to strategic visionary. And with every change comes opportunity. We are here to help you take advantage of this transition. to win at work, drive your career forwards, and lead with confidence.
Join Hannah Munro, Managing Director of ITAS, a financial transformation consultancy, as she interviews key experts to give you real world advice and guidance on how to transform your processes, people, and data. Welcome to CFO 4.0, the future of finance.
Hello everybody and welcome to this episode of CFO 4.0. My name is Hannah Munro, your host for today and with me today I have Amelia Sordell who is the founder of Clout, a personal branding agency. So welcome Amelia, lovely to have you on the podcast. Thank you for having me, I'm excited to be here.
Yeah I am because personal branding is not something we talk about a lot in particularly in finance so just tell us what is personal branding?
Well
So what is personal branding? So I do a live once a week on LinkedIn, and this is something that gets asked a fair amount. So if you think about it in two parts, you have your reputation, which is what you're known for and what you aspire to be known for.
So perhaps you want to be known as, to give you kind of a finance spin, I guess, perhaps you want to be known as someone who's strategic and who gets into other parts of the business. That's your reputation. Personal branding is the strategy and the execution of what you need to do in order to get that reputation.
So if you think of it as the results is the reputation and the personal branding is the sort of shaping of that and the strategy in which you get to that incredible place.
Fantastic. And I guess that's the question, isn't it? It's that how do you get there? How do you be seen? And is personal branding both internal and external or is it one or the other?
Um, internal and external as in business. Yeah, I think it's definitely both. So I think when most people think of their personal brand, they think of it as this thing that will help them get a new job.
But actually, so much more multifaceted than that, like it can help you get a promotion, it can help you win new customers, it can help you kind of develop kudos within your business, so that people who are perhaps higher up the rank than you or your team members buy into you more, and you then become a much more trusted kind of authority in that said topic
that you're trying to be known for. So personal branding is kind of two sides. You have internal within a business, which will help you get a promotion, help you win trust, help you build authority.
And then you have your external personal brand, which might be, you know, if you're trying to help the business win new business, or if you're trying to help boost the employer brand of the business, which is such an incredible result of personal branding is you have this amazing ability because people trust you more than they're going to trust the company brand, right?
So you can help the business hire better quality of people and also be part of something bigger than yourself.
Employees, brands, period, whether you're an intern or whether you're the CFO, every single person has got a part to play in making sure that that business is known as a market leader and has this reputation, which as I said a minute ago, is the end result of personal branding, as being the employer or kind of partner of choice.
And I think that's quite a cool thing to think about that you have kind of a role to play in the overall success of the business brand off the back of your own brand. I think that's pretty cool.
So that's a really awesome concept because I don't think many finance leaders certainly think about it in that way and that they can actually contribute to the success of their business through their personal brand as well.
And if I guess with the shift that's happening at the moment in finance around, you know, how that finance role is perceived, actually, that's where personal branding is going to become even more important in the future. So how does one go about building a personal brand? What does that process look like?
Yeah, it's a really good question.
my kind of first point of call with any clients or anyone that ever asked me this question is first of all like who are you trying to appeal to so if it's internal and you know you're trying to kind of position yourself as a much more strategic function within the business and you're no longer kind of that results viewer reviewer or spreadsheet kind of you know
person you want to be known as a strategic facet of that business you know you need to have a think about what you need to do and who you need to appeal to first of all like who is your this this sounds crazy, but who is your customer? Like who are you selling to with your reputation? Is it the CEO? Is it the board? Is it your team?
Like it's selling down. Who are you trying to betray this reputation to? And then the second kind of step there is what do you want to be known for? So I always tell clients to break kind of up what they want to be known for into what I call brand pillars.
So I run a personal branding agency, Clout, as you said, and I want to be known for three different things. I want to be known as a personal branding expert because clearly That's what I would love to be known for. And then the second thing I want to be known for is being a strong female business owner, because that's something I feel very passionate about.
And I am a out and out equal rights kind of, you know, activist. I talk a lot about it and it's something I'm really passionate about. So I want to be known for that also. But I also want to be known to champion startups and SMEs because that is an ecosystem I love.
I think it's an incredible space, you know, watching ideas turn into viable businesses and all that kind of stuff. So those are the three things I want to be known for. And the way I break that down is what do I do? do? What am I passionate about? And, you know, who do I do it for? And that's ultimately what formed my my three brand pillars.
So anyone listen to this, like, if you're trying to figure out what your brand pillars are, you know, what do you do? What do you want to be known for? And what are you passionate about? Like that, those are the things that you should be targeting.
And once you've got those three brand pillars, you then can start to think, right, what can I talk about within those pillars, that's going to get me that kind of aspirational reputation as someone who is, etc, etc, etc. And it's much, much easier for you to also think of content ideas.
So if you're going to be doing this on LinkedIn, which I think is probably the most sensible place to do this if you're in finance, because, you know, a lot of your peers, a lot of your decision makers, etc, will also be on the platform.
So if you've got those brand pillars in place, you know, let's take, for example, say a CFO wants to be known as a strategic, you know, leadership and people management. So those are the three things that they want to be known for. You could then go on to LinkedIn and start sharing content around those three ideas.
So your first piece of content could be something around the strategic pillar, which is how to be a strategic CFO in 2020. Like that's really interesting. And that'll be interesting to your peers. That'll be interesting to your board. That'll be interesting to your team probably, because they probably don't think a CFO is strategic.
They probably think that you're sitting behind a computer looking at data all day. And then the second thing is leadership. So you could talk about things, you know, how to lead a, how to to lead a remote finance team.
Like that's interesting or have conversations with other people and see what their challenges are in leading your remote finance team and then position that as a piece of content that you could share. And then the final thing is talent management.
So you could think about, you know, the role of a finance team within a business and how important that is and how undervalued that is and championing that function within a business. Those three things there are very, very different, but they're falling within those three pillars.
And if you do that consistently and if your pillars are as kind of broad as strategic CFO, leadership and people management, you have endless ideas there of what you can share. But eventually, once you do that consistently, you will then be known as those three things.
So if you're gunning for that CFO position, when that opening comes up, you're more than likely going to be someone that's going to be considered because you've been aspirationally positioning yourself as those three things that they need in a CFO for the last six to 12 months.
And is your approach in terms of personal branding, does it differ if you're going for a new job or if you're looking for a promotion? Would you change your approach and how you do it?
I always say to people, position yourself for what you aspirationally want to be known for. So don't post stuff or don't share stuff or don't kind of position your personal brand for the thing that you have now. It's like that old saying, dress for the job you want, right? Position your personal brand for the job you want, not the job you have.
So, you know, Clout's only three or four months old now, but we're really positioning ourselves as, and I say this humbly because, you know, we've been getting some incredible feedback, but we're positioning ourselves as the personal branding agency And that's happened very quickly because aspirationally, I said at the beginning, That's what we want to be known for.
I want to be known as the best person for any agency in the world. And we're quickly becoming known, certainly in the UK, as the people that are delivering that. So if you aspirationally go, this is what I want to be known for, and you're consistently moving the needle towards that thing, that's what you will then start to be known for.
So whether you're looking for a new job or a promotion, or you just want to win a bit more kind of internal kind of love from your team, like what do you aspirationally want to be known for? And that's the thing that you should be aiming for.
That's an amazing concept. So we talked a little bit about personal and how to do it. So is there any other top tips you can give somebody?
So if they say they, you know, they're trying to figure out what they should stand for, because that's almost like the critical piece from what you're saying is that actually figuring out the starting point and what you want to be known for. So it's only sitting there, I can imagine them with a blank piece of paper going, oh my God, where do I start?
What's your advice? How do they get to a point where they're like, right, the are my three pillars
yeah i can totally relate to that it can be quite overwhelming to go right this is what i want to be known for um i think to break it down like as i said if you if you think about who you are what you do and what you passionate about those could be your three pillars um and then that gives you you know, enough kind of personality that you're interesting
because you're talking about what you're passionate about and who you are, but then also really hammers home that you are an expert professional with what you do. I think that's a really good place to start.
And I think if you're confused or you're overwhelmed, you're like, oh my God, like this personal branding person's come on this podcast and they're telling me to post content and oh my God, it's so scary. I can totally relate. I get it. If you're at that point, Don't post. Just go and comment on other people's stuff. I think comments is content.
A lot of people undervalue the concept of engaging in other people's stuff. So if you don't know where to start, go and follow some CFOs of big businesses that have got big brands of their own. So when I say I've got big brands of their own, think of the ones that always get asked to do the webinars or are always on podcasts.
There might be people that have appeared on this podcast before. Go and follow them and see what they're posting.
comment on their stuff ask insightful questions if you don't understand the content that they're sharing ask follow-up questions because what happens is when you ask insightful things or if you make a comment on something there's a good chance that that person that originally posted that piece of content will reply to you and if they reply to you their entire network sees
and you know if you're commenting on the right types of things a good chance that everyone within that original posters network are people that you want to appeal to.
So you then, if you do that daily, you then start to build this credibility up with that network of people that you're trying to impress, if you like, and they will start seeing your name come up consistently with this insightful, interesting comments.
And that's also a really good place to find content ideas for you to then, once you've got the confidence to go and share in your own LinkedIn channel, you know, if you're writing content, comments, sorry, that are getting a lot of people coming back to or a lot of likes, because people like your comment they'll click like you could turn that comment into a post
because if people are liking that comment and engaging with that comment it's a good indicator that that is a good quality piece of of content essentially so why not repurpose it and share it as a post and kind of get that ball rolling i would say those are sort of the three places to start is number one your pillars simply break it down into who you are
what you do what are you passionate about and those are your three pillars um and then go and start commenting and engaging on other people's stuff on linkedin because 99 of people don't share content so if you're sharing content you're in the top one percent ninety percent of people don't engage anyone else's content so if you're engaging with other people's content
you're better than um everyone else basically so why would you
want to do that and it shows it helps because one of the things i've loved about lockdown is that it's actually given it's given more voice i think to people in that digital space there's so much more engagement on communities particularly linkedin i think linkedin has had a massive boost since lockdown so um I think that's the interesting piece, isn't it?
What's happened. And I think... you know, the comments and certainly I've seen it. Like I've spoken to more CFOs than I would ever get the chance to speak to in different places all around the world that you wouldn't normally get the chance to if you're sort of going out to a networking event and there's sort of 10 people.
So for me, that's a really exciting piece. But a lot of people find it hard to figure out, you know, how do I find that person? How do I figure out who the thought leaders are in this space? So you mentioned you could look at, you know, you know, podcasts and webinars.
Is there any other sort of hints and tips you've got for finding great people to follow and find out more about?
Google. Do you know what I mean? Genuinely, Google is where I probably go, first of all. So when I'm working with clients, we try to identify the people that they should be following to, number one, get inspiration, and two, to engage with their posts. And the first point, what we always do is go to Google. So who are the finance influencers?
And then you can kind of break down the articles that come up in the results and figure out what's the most beneficial for you. If you go on there and it's not that interesting or those people aren't really in your space, a good a good kind of place to go is to go and look at who other people are following.
So say, for example, you're a CFO or you're someone who would like to become a CFO in the not too distant future. You could go and look at, say, the CFO of Salesforce or the CFO of some big companies and then go and see who they're following. What are they sharing? What are their interests?
And then you can start to sort of start following the people that they're following. Because if they're following those people, there's a good indication that they're pretty good at what they're doing. But it might be the simplest as a starting point, just following CFOs of big businesses.
So Salesforce, NatWest, you know, I don't know, like some e-commerce businesses, like just cast your net really wide and then you can unfollow people if they're not interesting. And then you kind of get into this cadence of seeing who's out there and exploring new ideas.
And when you start commenting on these people's stuff, you'll also start seeing other people commenting on their stuff. And that's also a good way to find people to connect with and follow as well.
Brilliant. So yeah, it becomes a bit of a, I've noticed that as well. It starts to roll. It's like a snowball rolling down a mountain, isn't it? Once you start the first couple of the hardest, and then you start seeing more and more as you go through. So, and I have this as well.
So on the podcast, we do an episode called CFO stories, where we talk to different CFOs, different industries. And one of the hardest things is people don't want to necessarily do video. So does content always have to be video for it to be successful? Be particularly on platforms like LinkedIn.
Yeah, no, it doesn't. And I think the thing is, a lot of people will push video on, like a lot of LinkedIn experts or marketing people will say, you have to do video to cut through the noise. You don't. In isolation, text posts perform best. So when you think about that as a concept, okay, so why should I be doing video?
And don't get me wrong, I love video. And as you know, Hannah, like I put video up all day long. I just love doing it. I think I get my personality comes across better. I think I I get to the point quicker.
It's much easier for me to just stick a phone in my face and record what I want to say than sit down and write it down because I'm inherently lazy. I dictate everything to myself because I can't be bothered to write it. So video is not for everyone and that's okay.
I'm working with clients that point blank refuse to do video, but they're getting thousands of reactions on their posts and they're getting inbound leads from their ideal people. They're having these incredible conversations with people who potentially could be business partners, you know, partners in the future or potential hires. And I think that's the key thing.
is you don't have to do anything but start where you're comfortable not too comfortable because we all know that nothing good comes from being comfortable um but if you just want to go right i don't want to do video i'm scared of doing that that seems like a big faff it's going to take me a lot of time just start with text like don't make it over complicated
don't you don't force yourself into doing something that you know you're not going to continue because video is one of those things where you can't just do one video and it will do well you have to consistently show up and the same goes for posting period you have to consistently show up whether you're commenting on other people's stuff or you're posting your own
content. So give yourself a fighting chance and pick a medium that's going to be easy for you to continue showing up on.
absolutely and i think that's the piece isn't it start where you're comfortable or like you say sort of comfortable i love that phrase don't get too comfortable um and then figure your way through and most people will want to engage with you i think this is the people are scared to have an opinion aren't they on linkedin a lot of the time because they're worried
but actually some of the posts that i've seen the most interesting ones is when there's a discussion around the idea that somebody's putting forwards and i must admit i watch a lot of your your content um which is why you I know obviously I asked you on the podcast and it's exciting to see the regularity and the more you see, the more you want to consume.
And I guess that's the hard bit is it's keeping up with the flow of content. So if somebody's looking to build their brand, right? And they're like, right, I've got my pillars. I know I've got some ideas for some content. How often should they be posting? Should they be going out and doing it once a week, twice a week?
Is there a particular secret source as it were to being successful?
So I run a personal branding agency. So I post every day pretty much without fail. Although I haven't posted today yet, but I've got something banked for later. But you do not need to post every day. In fact, I don't encourage my clients to post every day because what happens is you become overwhelmed. It's a lot of work.
You end up spending all your time on the platform. And let's be honest, you have a whole other job to do. So like, why would you want to spend all your time on the platform?
So for people who are either just starting out or they've been posting weekly, daily, whatever, and they're not getting the results three times a week is more than enough because number one tuesday wednesday thursday are the most engaged days on the platform so it's an easy win if you're just posting on those days but secondly if you're posting more than three times a
week and it's not your job like this mine you will become so overwhelmed with all the things that you have to do to make sure those posts go well you have to go back to comments in real time you have to um make sure that your um engaging with what people are saying.
You have to be ready and willing to really put your kind of time aside and book in at least 30 minutes after you post to go back to everyone. And that's just not possible if you're doing that every day. So with my clients, I say book from 9 a.m. to 9.30 or 9 a.m. to 9.45. That's LinkedIn time.
And then the rest of the day, that's your time to do the rest of your work that you need to do. Because otherwise you then end up spending an hour every single day on the platform. And that's just an hour we don't all have.
so if you're serious about building a personal brand i will not lie to you it does take a time investment because you need to be willing to number one post but also go back to other people's comments and i cannot stress this enough going back you know you also know this hannah going back to people's comments helps driving drive engagement number one but number two
it's polite like if you've shared a piece of content and people have taken the time to leave you a comment comment back to them. Like, come on guys, you're not here to just take from the ecosystem. You need to give back too. So I think that's really important. Three times a week, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then you're golden for the rest of the time.
And just make sure you're scheduling in time to go back to comments as well. Because getting those many comments and reactions in the first few hours is critical to driving engagement across the day, week, month, et cetera.
And so obviously this is all the great stuff and the things you should do, but are there any sort of big mistakes that you see people make when they're doing personal branding where you go, you just have that cringe moment where you're like, oh my God, no, don't do that.
Yeah, so there are a couple. Number one, trying to say too much. So you see, if you've ever received an email, which I'm sure we all have, where someone has literally written you an essay and you're trying to read that on your phone, your brain sort of does a fart. Like you can't comprehend it.
this thing that's on your phone that's just like thousands of characters and you're like oh my god i can't read them the same thing happens when you post something on linkedin that is not concise and is not punchy and is not short most people read or look at linkedin through the app on their phone so if you're trying to tell a 500 page story on an app on a
phone you will not engage people because they'll read the first three lines and go god this is not getting to the point very quickly and they'll they'll scroll on so first of all keep it short Stick to the absolute necessary points of what you're trying to get across. So I always tell people to structure it a little bit like a news article.
So you have your headline and that's normally the punchy thing that gets people to want to read more. You then give it context. So what's the context of what you're trying to say? You then give your opinion. which is it needs to be a strong one. You can't be Switzerland. And then you give a call to action. So headline, context, opinion, call to action.
And the call to action piece is important because that's what psychologically tells people to engage with your content. So it might be agree. It might be thoughts. It might be who's with me. It might be, what do you think? It might be, I don't know, but just don't be super fluffy with it. It needs to be quite a punchy call to action.
I see so many people make a big mistake of going, I'm keen to hear my network's thoughts. Your network does not appear. Your network does not identify with network. They identify as human. So if you're trying to speak to a collective group of people, you lose interest. If you're trying to speak to one person and say, do you agree with me?
Then you'll get a response, whether it's negative or positive, because you ask them explicitly, do you as an individual agree with what I'm saying? That's really important. What other things do people do wrong? Negativity. I hate it. I see that so much on LinkedIn.
So I have a rule where sometimes i'll have kind of like a cheeky maybe like opinion about something but i never ever ever am negative i'll champion something i'll go this isn't this is you know hands up all these people these are amazing and i might not champion the other side of it but i would never be negative towards the other side because it doesn't matter
what social media platform you're on if you're sharing negative whingy whiny things two one of two things will happen one people will be like Who's this guy? Who's this girl? This isn't Facebook, that type of stuff.
And then the other thing that happens is because social media rewards engagement, if you start getting people who are engaging with your negative experiences, your negativity, it then creates this black hole of negativity where everyone is going, yeah, this is ridiculous. And I'm just like, why, guys? You're here to form a reputation for yourself.
So if you want to form a reputation of yourself for being a negative person, great. But is anyone going to want to work for that person? Is anyone going to want to hire that person? Is anyone going to want to promote that person? Probably not. So kind of have that internal check of, is this negative?
If it is, yes, I would probably not share it personally and i think finally what people do wrong is they have their b2b hat on and i say this all the time write how you speak no one wants to engage with some corporate marketing jargon like it's the most boring thing we this is a human to human member to member platform write how you speak and the easiest
way to do that and this is how i do it is to dictate the points you want to get across into your phones the notes section of your phone because that will guarantee that the way you structure your post is exactly how you speak And I cannot stress, it sounds so simple.
Conversational language is the absolute pinnacle of successful content on LinkedIn, is writing how you speak.
Yeah, no, that's it. I think this is the difficult thing is we sometimes forget that we're speaking to, like you say, other humans on LinkedIn. And there is a tendency because you want to be seen as professional, you want to be seen as this thought leader, but actually...
What I found is actually the more human you are, the more interaction you get and the more people want to listen to what you have to say. So I think that's a really great point. And in terms of personal brand, so we've talked a lot about those wanting promotion, those looking for a new role. What about using personal brand to attract potential new employees?
Because finding the right staff, even in this climate, finding the right people is challenging. challenging. So have you got any sort of suggestions for how people can go about
that? Yeah, and I think that's a really good question. This is something I'm working on with a couple of clients, actually. I'm working with some really incredible businesses at the moment with leadership teams, overall teams to help them build their personal brands for the employer brand, the overall employer brand.
They want to use their individual leaders, managers, teammates to attract better quality know tier one matches to who they're trying to hire which is obviously a lot cheaper than going out and head hunting or etc so for personal branding as an employer branding tool i think first of all people have to be bought into it right so you cannot force individuals to share
content if they don't want to share it you can make it easier for them so there's a company called the goat agency which is an influencer marketing agency And last year, I think it was, they decided that this was going to be their strategy, the personal branding, content sharing strategy.
on a community level rather than a mass marketing level was going to be their play for employer branding. And so they created this daily vlog where they hired someone, paid him full time, and he filmed the office and went and asked people questions.
And every single day, they released this short three-minute video on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on various other channels, and everyone in the business shared the same video. But the compounded effect of 120 people within the business sharing the same video when every single person in that business has got 10 times the reach of the company brand was insane.
So they can attribute real quality hires. They can attribute real quality clients and real quality revenue just from investing in that centralised employer branding approach.
um play which i think is so clever like something as simple as everyone so people think that as individuals we all have to share a unique thing and it all has to be it doesn't you can share the same thing as long as it's interesting and it's about positioning your business as human fun um challenging all the things that your values say that you should be known
for there's no reason why you can't do that in a centralized way and there's no reason you need to hire someone go and get your marketing executive or marketing manager to go and film it on their phone or Get people in the business involved.
If you're all remote working right now, pick five or six people per day that have to go and give you some selfie footage of what their day looks like, what coffee are they having, what things are they having, are they going for a walk, are they not going for a walk, do they have a dog?
All these things, and then you can just edit it up on iMovie very simply. It will take you 10 minutes, and you can push that out the next day.
And so you have this consistent employee-generated content, which means your employees and your leadership teams aren't having to worry about what they should be saying because it's done for them, but you're positioning your more business as authoritative, fun, transparent, because let's be honest, how many of us look at a career page testimonial and go, That's not real.
Like a stock image of a person smiling going, this is a great place to work and I worked here for five years. It might be true, but we don't believe it. We don't believe Glassdoor reviews anymore either because most businesses have got 4.9 out of five. Like, come on, that's not real.
Like, so you need to be having that transparency and having real life employees and real life opinions and real life behind the scenes insights into what your business does. That's so powerful.
And as I said, like the Go agency can attribute granularly how many people are attracted how much revenue it generated how many clients they want off the back of this one initiative and i think that's hugely powerful and then from a leadership perspective if you're giving if you're listening to this and you're a CFO or a finance manager, and you're going, this is
actually a really good idea, what you can do is go and speak to your marketing team and start kind of developing those pillars for your individual leadership, managers, et cetera, and start encouraging them to share content that would be relevant to the wider audience of what your business does.
So not necessarily appealing to other finance managers, because that might not be who your business overall hires. It might be that you're just one department in a department of many.
So have a think about the types things that your potential employee would be interested in and perhaps you work in a software company and it's a really disruptive marketing technology like why don't talk about technology and the evolving role of of technology in marketing like whatever it's going to appeal to the people you're trying to attract your leadership team can
start sharing those start sharing behind the scenes stuff of what's happening in your office talking about wins i think just showing up and being being consistently authentic is really important to the success of a personal brand, whether you're doing it for a promotion perspective or an employer branding perspective, and also that centralized hub of sharing video and employee
stories and stuff I think is also really powerful as well and makes it a lot easier for you obviously as well.
Yeah and I loved your comment about just you know just just edit it in iMovie just get it out there because there isn't a perception isn't it that everything needs to be perfectly perfectly done to be able to share it with anybody so what's your opinion on that what's your thoughts?
Very simply, done is better than perfect. I love that. So this is like the motto of our business. So I say our, as in there's loads of us, there's not. There's three of us at the moment.
We have this thing and we're hopefully going to get a big neon sign that literally says done is better than perfect because you can spend your entire life perfecting something. But if you don't get it out there, it doesn't matter whether it's perfect or not. It's like screaming in a forest.
If no one hears you, did you actually actually scream so you need to you need to just get it out there stop trying to perfect stuff it doesn't need to be amazing it just needs to be done and interestingly the the stuff that i've done that's been the least particularly on linkedin and i know a lot of other social media platforms are the same the most
underproduced stuff is often the stuff that performs best because people view it and go that's real like that's a real person with a real opinion and a real body and mind and they've they've shared something with me rather than it being this overproduced with a camera crew and perfect lighting and all this kind of stuff people don't trust that because that's basically
what mass marketing mass advertising like people don't not trust mass marketing and advertising they do trust consumer and employee generated content which is where that done is better than perfect piece is so important is keeping it real proper behind the scenes, none of this polished up, filtered rubbish. And that's where you'll build that credibility piece.
Yeah. So don't worry about the Instagram generation, right? It doesn't need to have a filter on it to work. It just needs to be out
there. On Instagram even, there is this huge shift that I'm noticing to influencers that don't filter their stuff are getting loads more followers than the people that do because people are like, you're real.
Posting pictures, like mummy bloggers posting pictures of like puking their hair and stuff and getting more followers than those that are filtering and tweaking every single image because people are sick of feeling rubbish about themselves. People are sick of seeing a highlight reel. They want to see real human beings, you know, living their life.
And we all know that social media to some degree is rolled in glitter. But I think if you if you are showing up and being authentic, and I think this is personally why I've managed to, and I don't mean this arrogantly, but I've managed to amass a pretty decent following over the last, it's definitely kind of propelled since lockdown.
And I think that's because I'm just myself. Like, This conversation we're having here now is exactly the same person that shows up on Lives every week. And it's exactly the same person that, you know, is going on someone's comment being like, I think I'm exactly the same person. And sometimes I'm not rolled in glitter and sometimes I'm a bit rough and that's okay.
People appreciate that. And I think that's important. Authenticity is really important.
I love that. Authenticity. What a mouthful that word is. Authenticity is incredibly important. And I think that's something that people need to think about because there's no point putting a brand out there that isn't you. You know, if you're not naturally enthusiastic and, you know, energized, then don't be that person. Be that sort of person.
that the other person that you genuinely are but that's still really valuable and I think there's a danger isn't that people think they need to be this you know whole different person have a different face on themselves when they're on social and that for me is not what it's about it's about taking the best bits of you and putting it out in front of you know
in front of your your colleagues in front of your your customers in front of your you know your leadership team and saying right this is who I am and this is what I stand for which is really exciting so So let's take it back to our audience then.
So finance leaders wants to position themselves as a strategic, forward thinking member of the team that knows more than, you know, can add more value than just counting numbers. What would be your sort of your first steps? What would you say like the first 30 days, this is what you do?
First 30 days. So again, it kind of goes back to what do you aspirationally want to be known for? So if those are the three things that you want to be known for, then that's easy. Hannah's just thought it out for you
yeah don't everyone listen to this and go right that's what I'm gonna do because it'll be a very boring world
actually actually the best thing about and to go back to what you said a minute ago the best thing about personal branding is it is personal to you so you and I could want to be known for exactly the same things but we will say it in such a different way and present it in such a different way and do it in our own way that it's still interesting and
still unique and still personal to us so you could everyone listening to this right now can be like, right, honey, you've nailed it. That's exactly what I want to be known for.
But the way you present yourself as strategic, the way you present yourself as forward thinking, the way you present yourself as tech savvy or whatever it is that you want to be known for it doesn't matter whether I'm doing the same thing. I'll present it in a different way. I'll have different thoughts about it. I'll have different ways of doing things.
And that's why personal branding is so powerful is because it is personal. And why would you want to sound like anyone else? Like, you know, to go back to what you said a minute ago about, you know, showing up and being you, if you're an introvert, be an introvert. Like there's nothing bad about that. I'm clearly an extrovert.
But you don't, you don't have to be anyone other than yourself. And, Actually, a good example of someone who does this perfectly is a guy called Don McGregor, who is, if anyone has listened to this podcast and has come across Stephen Bartlett before, you will understand what I'm talking about here.
Stephen Bartlett owned and has recently exited a business called Social Chain, which is a huge marketing agency, social media marketing agency. And they took that business from zero, seven years in, from zero in their bedroom, you know, building community pages to 220 million pounds in revenue per year and floated on the London Stock Exchange, right?
So that is an amazing journey. Stephen has a huge personal brand. He's the co-founder. He's a real extrovert like me, has strong opinions, not afraid to say them. His co-founder, Don McGregor, who was the chief operations officer, not the CEO, He's the opposite, hates attention, just wants to, he's the implementer.
He's the guy behind the scenes, making sure the engine's running and tinkering with it and making sure people are doing what they need to be doing and operationally everything's moving well, et cetera. He's got such a strong personal brand now.
And that's because he shows up and shares his opinion, but it's done in such a, authentic way like if you read his posts and you've ever listened to him or have a conversation with him i've spoken to him before he's done um a few things um with me before or rather for a business i was working working for he the way he presents himself is exactly the same
as how you have a conversation with him and he's very kind of um reserved and he likes to think about things before he says it and um and that's just part of his personality and that comes across so clearly when he's writing content so if you're someone who's listening to this going yep that sounds like me, Amelia, please go and follow Don McGregor and see how
he presents things, because He has this very authentic way of positioning his opinion without it being controversial, without it being combative, which I think is really interesting. Whereas I, if I had the same opinion, would be like, this is my opinion. What are your thoughts? And that takes a level of perhaps self-confidence to want to do that.
If you don't have that self-confidence, I think he's a good person to look at to go, OK, I can do this. If he can do that, I can do it.
that's that's a great tip and takeaway so you know look at others and see perhaps who you identify with um see see their style of leadership or thought leadership and personal branding and then maybe look at figuring out what yours looks like but yeah I love that you know it doesn't have to be out there and really in your face you can just be who you are put
it out there so so I followed you for a very you know for quite a while last couple of months particularly since lockdown and you've always been amazing and for anyone that's listening if you want to know anything about personal branding, Amelia is definitely the person to follow.
So if people do want to learn more about what you guys do, what cloud does, what's the best way to get hold of you? Where do they find you?
Probably LinkedIn. I
spend way too much time on the
I think I'm the only Amelia Sordell on LinkedIn. So if you search Amelia Sordell, S-O-R-D-E-L-L, I should come up top rank, I think.
Well, even if you can't, we will put the link in the show notes. And tell us a little bit about Clout because you've been doing personal branding for a long while, but you just started it three months ago, didn't you?
Yeah. So I've been building my personal brand. To give you context, I used to work in the recruitment space. So I worked I was a marketing manager at a global headhunting business that worked in the tech ecosystem. So I love tech, as you can tell. I've always been in that space.
And I was trying to get our headhunters to build their personal brands because when I was a headhunter, that's how I won business. I don't know if you're listening to this, if you're familiar with the headhunting and sort of agency, recruitment agency space, you are heavily targeted on sales.
So calls, you've got really strong KPIs of call times and how many people you need to have spoken to and all this type of thing. And no one could understand why I was making all this money, but not making a single call every day. Like everyone was like, what is she doing? She's literally doing no work and making all this money.
And it's because I was building my personal brand on LinkedIn. I was using marketing tactics to reach out to CEOs, tech startups, and basically just branding myself.
And when I kind of moved on from that headhunting role and was promoted into the marketing role, I wanted to the recruiters to do the same as that i did because i was like how awesome would this be if they were doing the same level of outreach which they get they're billing lots of money doing but then paired that with strong personal brands they would almost
double their revenue every year just from sleeping um but no of course none of the recruiters would listen to me because they were like well you haven't recruited for two years and what the hell do you know so i was like well screw this i'm gonna go and do it myself and show you how easy it was easy it is um it wasn't easy it took a little bit it took
a bit of time Like I didn't know any of the things I've just spoken about. And so it was all about kind of trying and testing stuff. But after two or three months, I started to get traction and I was getting thousands of views on my videos. And I was getting sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of reactions on my posts.
And people were going, how is she doing this? And why is she doing this? And so I was like, well, consultants, imagine if all these people could potentially be customers for you. And then that's where that personal branding piece started to really take off. And I ended up moving into a VC, working with a VC.
And I worked with all the companies within their portfolio and helped their teams do that as well. And then lockdown happened, as we all know, this beautiful pandemic that we're all in the midst of. And I think like many people, I decided that I didn't want to work for anyone else anymore. And my priorities shifted. And I've got two young kids.
I've got a three-year-old and a 19-month-old. And I was never seeing them. I was probably weeks from burnout. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to go and do something for myself. I'm really good at this personal branding thing.
I don't know probably incredibly naive of me but I have this like eternal optimist out of my life I go I'll be okay like I always have an attitude like I never yeah I never have like a plan I just do it which is probably not everyone listening to this in finance people going oh my god she sounds like a nightmare but like I just go with my gut if I
think something I have data points of course but if I'm getting good results from something I'm like well let's do it so I've got my safe job like any normal human being I was, you know, a very safe job and decided to go out on my own. And we launched Clout at the beginning of August and we were oversubscribed in four weeks, which is insane.
And the best part about that is, number one, I didn't have a website. It was all off my personal brand. So we're walking the talk, right? And the second thing is that I didn't even, I just had no plan. I didn't know how we were going to charge people, how we were going to help people.
All I knew that I wanted to help individuals and companies use personal branding to grow during this time because we could all do with a bit of help right now um both on individual level but also on a business level and so that's why i went into it i want to get real results from people and it's kind of evolved from there and we're three months in and we
feel like we've been doing it for years but it's been an awesome journey and i love working with the businesses we work with we work with everyone from tech like i'm working with a tech founder all the way up to footsie businesses which is you know incredible so it's been awesome
fantastic so yes if any obviously if anyone wants to find out more about Clout and Amelia genuinely go you know you really do walk the walk and talk the talk and hence how I found you and ask you to come on the podcast so thank you so much Amelia for coming on the podcast you have been amazing and please if anyone is looking to get started do reach out
because I can say that certainly even just connecting and watching your content is fantastic so thank you so much for coming on the podcast
thank you
so much for having me it's been so much fun thanks for listening and i hope you enjoyed this episode i actually have a favor to ask reviews and shares are incredibly important to the success of any podcast if you could spare a minute to share this episode on your social network or leave us a comment to tell us what you liked i would really appreciate it feel
free to tell me what topics interest you most i would really love to hear your feedback And if you want to reach out at any point, tell us what you liked, tell us what we can do better, then feel free. Just email us at cfopodcast at itassolutions.co.uk. Thank you and speak soon.