The One Hour Time Investment That Changes Everything: Why You Absolutely Need a Personal Brand (Even if you don't think you do) ft. Vanessa Errecarte

Hey, friends, and welcome to episode 332 of It's About Time, a podcast about work, life, and balance.

I'm your host, time management coach, Anna Dearman-Kornick.

And before we get into this episode, I want to share with you the worst career advice I ever received.

You ready? Here it is.

Keep your head down, get the work done, and people will notice.

And I'm just going to say it, that advice doesn't work.

Worse, it can leave you feeling like if you do have to promote yourself, you must not be good enough to be noticed on your own merit.

And that's a rough place to sit.

That's why I knew I had to bring my guest today onto the show, because here's the thing.

You can't control someone else noticing your hard work.

That's chance.

That's passive.

But you can control how you show up and how people understand what you bring to the table.

And that's exactly the conversation I had with today's guest, Vanessa Ericardy.

Vanessa sits at this incredible intersection of personal branding, marketing, and teaching, and she has a way of making personal branding feel like the least icky thing in the world.

So if the term personal brand makes you cringe a little, or if you feel like it doesn't really apply to you, stick around, because Vanessa is about to reframe the whole thing for you.

So let me tell you a Vanessa Eric-Hardy is an award-winning lecturer and marketing consultant who created and teaches one of the nation's only four-credit MBA courses in personal branding at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.

She's been named Teacher of the Year twice and was recognized as a favorite professor by Poets and Quants' Best and Brightest MBA list.

For more than two decades, Vanessa has helped thousands of professionals and organizations clarify their value and create meaningful impact through her consulting and training agency, Marketing Simplified.

Her insights have appeared in the Financial Times and her debut book, Valuable and Visible, Redefining Personal Branding by Putting Impact Over Image, just launched with Wiley Publishing.

In today's conversation, Vanessa shares why personal branding isn't actually about you and why that reframe changes everything.

She talks about the counterintuitive reason holding you back on your personal brand is actually the selfish move.

Vanessa talks through how to find your distinctive angle using a simple framework she calls the truth framework and why owning your own website, not just your social media accounts, is a form of control.

So if you've ever felt like your hard work should speak for itself, but somehow it's not being heard, This episode is your guide to becoming the kind of distinctive that actually gets noticed.

And I know you've got a lot on your plate, so I want to make this as easy as possible for you.

You can find all of the tools and resources mentioned in this episode, including how to connect with Vanessa and grab her new book, over in the show notes at abouttimepodcast.com forward slash 332.

Finally, I want to thank you again for tuning in to It's About Time.

If you haven't already, take a sec and click subscribe so you never miss an episode.

And if you have a few extra minutes, I would so appreciate you taking the time to leave a rating and review.

Your reviews play a huge role in helping this show reach more busy women just like you.

And with that, it's about time we get started.

So let's get this show on the road.