Your Iconic Image : How To Master Your Personal Brand

Your Iconic Image

Rob Napoli

Rise Up Coaching

Rob is the Host of The Bear Necessities of Entrepreneurship Podcast and is an entrepreneur, speaker, and author of ‘The Social Soul’. His journey has taken him from the Midwest to New York City by way of Milan, Italy where he got a Masters's, scaled a global startup, and coached professional American Football. He is currently the Founder of Rise Up Coaching, and Co-Founder and Board Member of Hapday Group. Rob is a continuous learner who creates engaging keynotes, programs, workshops, and curriculum and is on a mission to find the best whiskey bar in Manhattan.

beacons.page/robnapoli

www.linkedin.com/in/robnap

www.riseupcoaching.co

IG: @rise_up.robnap

www.marlanasemenza.com

Audio : Ariza Music Productions

Transcript : Vision In Word

Marlana: Rob Napoli of Rise Up coaching is a continuous learner who is on a mission to find the best Whiskey Bar in Manhattan. He is the host of the bare necessities of entrepreneurship podcast, and as an entrepreneur, speaker, and the author of the social soul. Welcome, Rob.

Rob: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Marlana: So, we're gonna talk today about mastering our personal brand. So, I'm just gonna let you have the floor and dive into it. How do we do it?

Rob: That is a great question. There's a quite a few different ways to do it. Right. And I think it really depends on let's first define what like your personal professional brand is right? And that is that many of us live with kind of two sides of our brand, meaning we have the personal touches, a lot of times like Facebook, Instagram, Tick Tok, Snapchat, whatever, then we have a professional, which is usually just like LinkedIn, right. And we try to keep these things separated for a long time, that was a big goal. But now in a hyper connected digital age, it's no longer about one or the other, and some people can, and some people do. But for most without they're really become a blended thing. And it's because we want to be treated like humans, both personally and professionally. Right, especially in sales and marketing, things like that. And so how do we do that? And it's kind of, you know, it's why I call it the social saw in the book is thinking about, how do we be authentically us online. And so that's where the idea of a personal professional kind of tied together and starting Yeah, you know, you may throw pictures of your kids on Facebook showing off, you know, kids, but that's not how you wanna throw on LinkedIn, maybe you could, if you want to, it's nothing wrong instead. But you might have LinkedIn, it's like more about your professional journey and failures in wins and losses in the workplace versus Facebook at home, you can have that kind of delineation. But understand that those lessons can carry over, it's some of the stuff that you learn at home, you can share here, it doesn't necessarily be oh, this is one thing. And this is the other and a completely separate, I can't crossover content.

Marlana: So that's the thing, too. Let me just ask you this, don't you think to that, because the world is so social, and we do have all these different platforms that it's important to show up consistently on each platform? So, people aren't getting Okay, on LinkedIn, she appears this way. And on Facebook, she appears completely different. there's got to be some kind of a…

Rob: Yeah, I mean, that comes to the fact that like, if you go into a car meeting, and you're not moving the person you're talking with and meeting with, like, who are you? And what are you doing? Right, so first? Yeah, I mean, there's got to be some consistency. You know, consistency is relative, not everyone needs to post daily, not everyone is supposed to weekly and monthly, but you can't just have a profile, and never posts and back. Why bother LinkedIn, you know, there's got to be something there. And it's the whole idea of sales nowadays to be human. Right, and salespeople, before they get on the phone with you, they're gonna know not just what you do professionally, they're gonna know you personally. And if you have kids, if you'd like to go golfing unless you have every one of your profiles locked. And then I'd say how many people do we know a comment? And I'll go look and see if I know somebody like, hey, what can you tell me about, you know, Marlana? What can you tell me about Rob, what can you tell me about Rachel, what can you tell her about Jane’s? And so, I tagged on a call if you want to know something about you, right. And so that's why it's important to have consistency across channels. That's why it's important to show up. And, and you know, you don't have to, I'm really against taking the same piece of content and blasting out across all the channels, I think you need to different channels have different tones of voice that you want to have. So, you kind of want to tailor taking the same image or video, but the way you present it, and the text that goes along with it should not be copy, paste, copy, paste, because I don't follow Rob. If I follow him on Instagram, why would I follow him on Twitter? Right? And if you want them to follow your different platforms, then you want to make sure that your platforms are a little bit different.

Marlana: Yeah, that makes sense. And is it more about like you said before, it's not about necessarily showing up every day, but I feel like we do have to be consistent and show up in you know, because the people that seem to be showing up at least are the ones that are getting the attention. Maybe they're not the best at what they do, or but there, they're there. So yeah,

Rob: I mean, it's such a great point, I want to say since I know there's stuff there, yeah, no, it's this like cuz there is something to be said that they're always there. But why are you there? What is the reason for being there? I mean, I have a bunch of, you know, I'm like an early adopter of new platforms. But Marco Polo came out, boom, Snapchat, but Instagram hashtag. I was like, people made fun of me, the hashtag King. He'll made fun of me for documenting. You know what time before I moved off to Italy as kind of playing my final year of football and I wanted to move positions to play one last year, a different position. So, I dropped 45 pounds. For that season, I document that whole journey. I was like, Oh, you're the guy taking this picks the gym. I'm like, Yeah, but it's for a reason. It's accountability. It's both for myself and for others. And you I think being there's one thing, but why are you there, you know, just to have elected because everyone says you should have it versus, I'm there. I've put some thought into my profile. I've shared a little bit. I've engaged a little bit. Maybe it's once a blue moon. But I'm there I show up. Right. And the best example, I can use it this right clubhouse. And even in my book, I read about clubhouse, and I already was gonna rip that out because I think clubhouse is already dead. And that's how fast and I authored this book in the summer. Like I finished the book in the summer of this year. I'm sorry, 2021, so seven months ago. But clubhouse almost got broken. When Elon Musk jumped in a room and did a thing. And clubhouse rooms only handled 20,000. It was crazy. They have a room of 20,000 people. It's just a whole lot. And the fact that people are actually like beating themselves and like, you know, I mean, granted when I'm on stage, but the whole thing and you think about it, why? For whatever anyone thinks about Elon Musk, why are people like Elon Musk, or Dave Portnoy, the CEO of Barstool Sports? That CEO anymore President right, America and our genius, you know, but why are they so popular? It's because they show up on social and they talk to generations, versus the VP or CEO of Johnson and Johnson, no one knows about gravity, they might not need to be there. But why is Elon Musk there? Why does he do it, she doesn't need to be there. He does it because he knows if he if he's there, Gary Vaynerchuk. Same thing, if he's there, he creates brand ambassadors and lifetime and earns longer lifetime value of customers by catching them at 15 1617 where they come and work for you because the best invest talent, or they buy a Tesla. You're creating longer lifetime value, brand engagement, brand awareness and brand loyalty at a much earlier space in place. And so many people missing out. The other side of this, though, is that we don't need more freaking influencers, right? Don't go on and try being an influencer, you gotta go on and be authentic. And if that's showing up once a month, and that's showing up once a month, bacteria are no point to bring this full circle, you have to be there and you have to know why you're there. And you have to know why you're there to engage. And in what way do you want to engage these places? It's a waste of time and space, and a waste of your energy.

Marlana: Agreed? And you know, a friend of mine had said once What do you want to be an influencer or a person of influence because there's a big difference.

Rob: You'll never believe this. That file just randomly showed back up on my desktop, and it's now downloading. And it's a fairly big file. And so, I just paused it and literally have no idea. I haven't touched anything. I've been talking to you for the last 10 minutes. That file just stops. It started downloading and it just stuck the bandwidth. So, I apologize. I think we're back to stable. It's the people that were talking in your ears telling you don't worry about it. I got your file. It's fan just crazy. So 5g is for that quick little crazy waiting, so it should be good. Everything sized again. Okay. So, let's like sweating right now. For the audience I don't know Okay guys out there right before this call, I thought I lost the file was freaking out came to the call two minutes late. I was like, hey, I'll be fine. Oh, you'll figure it out. Cool. So, I shut everything off focus on that conversation in the middle of the conversation the file pops back up and starts downloading, haven't touched anything, haven't done anything in the last segments other than talk to y'all and I was sweating again. I feel bad in the middle of this, all this craziness but that is you know that is serendipity that is karma that is letting things go and letting you know letting go of things you can't control, which is a big lesson around building your personal and professional brand. And driving things across social being authentically you is that you can't control the biggest fear, is that what other people are going to say and think you can't control that. You can control what you post, you can control hire, respond, you know, I talk, attitude and effort all the time. I think there's John Barrows. Now it's like, eat this new thing. It's effort, attitude. And a Kenworth T was, but you know, anyways, I was talking about attitude, effort, by attitude and effort. And it's the idea behind and trolling is that if you have a great attitude, and you give great effort, good things can happen. When you do that, you destroy both things, you control your response as well, not only to control what others do, but you control how you respond. So that's taking that breath, it's having the attitude to be positive, and the effort to take a breath when you're mad, step back and say, Hey, okay, and then you figure out how to respond, oh, the narrative backwards or back to the others. So

Marlana: let me ask you this, because you touched on something that I always tell people, and it said, we can't control what other people think of us. However, we can control, we can steer the conversation. So how, in your opinion, do you steer the conversation when you're building a brand?

Rob: You know, I was (whose podcast, was it?) So, I'm gonna answer your question. But I had a weird realization yesterday. Pulled up my Spotify to listen to music for the first time in a while, and I put on like a new country station. And I realized I hadn't heard any of the songs or playing. And I've realized I've been so this is not to sound pretentious, but I've been so consumed by consuming content for the last four months, that what I have my headphones and I'm listening to a podcast. Like I literally today, I'm still two weeks behind, but I'm almost caught up like on all the podcasts that I have and listen to and follow and almost cut up and like, I just consistently consume content in that music. And I was also a Casio Dad, I can't remember whose it was, but he was talking about, you know, the whole phenomena that everyone wants to see succeeding to succeed. Once their perception of you is that you're successful, they start wanting to tear you down, because they want to be you. Right, so you can't so to your point of not controlling how to think how to control that narrative is, you're not going to because they're gonna either be with you or against you. And it's tough, because if you want to really create yourself as a person of influence, you have to stand for something. And the minute you stand for something, you will isolate someone, just by the nature of it. And we fear more about those who we isolate, than we do that those that buy in. So, if you want to control, have that narrative, post content that's meaningful to you. Post what you feel is authentic and valuable and drives value into others. And that's all you do. Because if people are going to career disagree. What most people don't do though, is they don't lean into the uncomfortableness of the disagreement. Hey, great point. Would you mind having a conversation for five minutes about that further? Learn? Don't be so bullheaded that, well I'm right, you're wrong or I'm the influencer and you're not. Because Zig Ziglar and I love this quote. I people. Most people don't laugh about it. I've done this multiple times. So, people do but what is an expert? X former spurt waterspout. You know, you're somebody who talks about spreading out information in the past. Right? If you really want to be a person of influence, you need to start being an expert. Being a forward thinker, meaning you're talking about things to come you're taking chances on saying hey, I think this might happen based on bias. Experience of 20 years this way, I think the next big thing is this, I think is going to happen. And for many of us, I don't want that. We're too afraid to put our names out there. If you want to control that conversation, the only thing you can do is just post meaningful and valuable content that you feel as you and think, let it ride.

Marlana: Let me ask you this, do you think in there with what you just said, that when you start to put yourself out there, and you start to have people follow you and things like that, and you start to stand for something, if somebody challenges that in a way, or comes up and has something to say the opposite, or questions you or anything like that? How much of that do you think, is a little imposter syndrome coming up that? Oh, well, if they challenged me, and I either don't have the answer, or if I, you know, shift my position at all, then people are gonna think that I'm not what I was.

Rob: Oh, God! Apostasy hits everybody. You mean, I talked about in my book, I talk all the time, I had my episode, last episode a year at my twin brothers talking about it and how, you know, I continue to deal with it. In the first episode of this show, I talk a little bit high deal syndrome. I still deal with it those days, Mike. Yeah, I meant to be part of this conversation is like, How the hell am I in this conversation? Why am I lucky enough to be in this room? As a day's like, Wait, is everything I was telling a lie? It did everything I just right, wrong. You're gonna go through that. And one of the biggest things I can say, when people challenge you is you have to look at your motivation, right? There are two types of motivation, internal and external. We look at that as a hitbox for motivation. And we look at engagement as extra motivation to keep posting more and admitted that starts are negative that to Windows the five extra motivation, extra motivation is only it's limited. It's meant to spark an internal fire. But if that internal fire, the internal motivation is not there, nothing will ever carry. And so, you know, from an imposter syndrome standpoint, you have to kind of look at that and that. Okay, cool. This is again, I can control how I respond. I don't know the answer to this. Oh, what the hell do you have at your disposal? Google? can go find out the answer. You can also say, hey, great point. We'd love to discuss it. Let me come back to you. Guess what, it's a comment. You don't have to respond right away. You can take 24 hours go do your due diligence and come back to or Hey, great point. XYZ or hey, I send out love to discuss the further so great point too long to put in a comment thread, we'll have to maybe have a conversation. There are all kinds of ways you can circle back to that. The key here is you don't have to know everything. It is absolutely okay if you're not trying to

Marlana: Yeah. And I think we have to stop taking everything as an offence if somebody questions us it's not an offence or and I think to so many times we listen with the intent to respond and not to hear what they're actually saying.

Rob: That is huge. Like that right there's a huge nugget right listen with the intent to hear band Yeah. Right versus listening tend to respond What's your right like that kind of knock you back for a second because I was already thinking about why our response versus like you're gonna kind of that's a great there's something so poignant that is, you know, you get to just hear and that when you post something out to the world, you gotta hear the world. In fact, if you don't know where to start and Cray start paying engaged In fact, the best thing to do to be a person of influence is not to create content to engage with content. Right, because engaging you're allowed to ask questions, delve deeper conversations, be more of a spark to a flame that's going like it's you actually, you know, it's like you're blowing oxygen onto a flame of things that are happening. You don't have to be another you don't have to push our time some people don't want to it's cool don't want to do videos cool down, go engage on 10 posts a day spark conversation, and then see who else is commenting on it. That's what people don't do so they can't believe salespeople don't do enough, but I see a lot of sales and fun to talk about this. So, this is nothing new but say you posted something great, and I commented “Hey balls law love this of that.” I'm gonna go through and look at all those people are commenting and seeing if people are you know, I'm throwing out those says Hey, Greg posts is cool. But I'm looking at who's commenting, you know, meaningfulness I might go look at who likes it and see, even like my ICP, average shout, hey, great couple, you know, great comments on the post, you know, I had similar feelings, would love to have a chat, but we put like, what better way to start organic conversations, then use the fact that you're engaging in other content to do that and make that full circle, right. So, you don't even have to create content at all, to become kind of a