In the Era of AI, Your Personal Brand Matters More Than Ever | Bryan Wish - E69

Well, you touched on one of the questions I wanted to drive to, so let's go there now, which is this idea of personal branding, 'cause I would've bought into what I believe, hearing you talk about it and having, you, you know, read a lot of your work, a false narrative of that per- that personal branding was an ego play.

I would've thought that before because it just, it, the label would've been misapplied.

Tell me what personal branding is and why you believe it's so important for everyone to have one, to curate it, to be thoughtful about it, because five years ago I would've said, "Well, personal branding is for those egomaniac influencers who are, you know, just wanna make it all about them." I know now that's not the case, but for anyone listening, like, walk us through what it is and why you think it's so important.

Right now, like, we're in a world where the market forces, like, people wanna go independent more and more.

People want to utilize their own expression.

People wanna have their own ability to show up in the world and derive value for the things they are good at.

You see it more and more of, of...

And when you make that decision, the first question is, is, "How do I do that?"

Mm.

And people are buying you.

Uh, the second use case would be you're, you know, you're president of a company for 15 years and, you know, the company sells to PE and you're out of a job because they reduce cost structure and they take the president role out, or any position that's high up and they collapse costs.

You see it as, you know, I mean, really anyone.

You see it as the, the young creator who's, like, 24 years old and they have all these things and they wanna share and get known and, you know, they might not have that much life experience, but to get known and have visibility and have people attracted to them, you know.

In all those cases, like, the need for a brand is, is more than ever, right? For salespeople at an organization, like lawyers, mortgage bankers, insurance agents, you know, all these people, there's hundreds of thousands of these people.

And I'm not saying they're not unique, but it's commoditized, and so, like, y- you need brand to basically give people an impression and a distinction around your work.

And in your case, Dusty, you know, there's a lot of people in the leadership development space, and a lot of people are saying the same things.

Mm-hmm.

How do you differentiate, distinguish you from everyone? Well, by consistency, brand, all those things.

So I think... and you do a good job at it, but the thing is, is that, you know, my belief is that we all need a brand and people are buying us as individuals, and we need to give them reasons to buy us over the person to our left and right, and that is very important when it comes to, you know, having a, you know, business or a business of one, if you're gonna make that or you're gonna be a top sales performer inside of a company.

Um, this isn't about ego.

This isn't about telling the world how great you are.

It's about distilling a body of knowledge and expertise, and so the personal stories that convey to the world who you are, and, you know, we can go into all the semantics of how you do it, but I think w- we're moving into a world with AI and all these things where having a brand that's about you, that's intentional, is, is becoming table stakes.

Then the question is how do you do it in a cost-effective way? Uh, which is also becoming much easier.

So it's vital, and it'll only continue to become more vital as the world gets more similar.

Well, it's interesting.