The art of building your personal brand

Nikhyl: [00:00:00] Hi, everyone. My name is Nikhyl Singhal. I'm your host for the Skip Podcast, the podcast dedicated to getting you ahead in your tech career. today's topic focuses on personal branding. Personal branding is one of those nebulous things that I think all of you know matters, but aren't spending enough time focused on, which makes it a great topic, it's career additive, it's a little unclear, and frankly, the wisdom on the internet and in the AI chat, GPT type responses isn't the type of advice that I find my leaders in my skip community really listens to. When we did a recent gathering of some of the CPOs and head of products and up and comers on, our Skip community, this topic became such a popular one that everyone wanted to discuss.

I actually grabbed a couple of advisors to help me think through personal branding, defining it, figuring out how to establish it, and then how to take advantage of it for career growth. I pulled together this [00:01:00] conversation with two executives that I know.

One is Iska Saric who's a leader at Meta in PR and Annie Pearl, who is an executive at Microsoft these days, but has held head of product roles in a couple of other big settings. Both of them have an envious career. Both of them are people that I've known for nearly a decade plus. And both of them had a lot of interesting things to say about branding.

And so what I decided to do is after we had this conversation with the community, I decided to take some of the learnings and lessons that were uncovered and pull together this podcast episode. format wise, I think all of you know that I always playing with formats using some of the voice gen AI features that are out there as well as trying to simulate a conversation as much as possible.

So this episode is no different. It's a fictitious conversation that I have between myself and a female leader. The voice of the female leader is generated, but it'll help walk us through some of the key lessons that we learned in that [00:02:00] discussion.

And ultimately my hope is you exit this podcast with a lot better sense of what you should and most importantly should not be doing when it comes to establishing and expanding your personal brand. So we'll hand it off to Julie, our guest for today.

Julie: Hi Nikhyl, thanks for chatting with me about branding. And just to get started, here's what I know about the topic. Brand is important, but I'll admit I'm a little too busy right now to invest in it. My fear is that it's going to come back to bite me. Does brand matter? And what does a good brand enable?

Nikhyl: Hi, Julie. Thanks for joining me on today's podcast. I think most people listening to this podcast would agree that brand probably matters. They don't quite know what to make of it and they worry that they're not investing enough time. It's not a priority if you will. So you're in good company if you're asking this question. I like to think of brand as a tailwind for your career.

A good brand will help pull you forward. It will help you hire someone [00:03:00] who's maybe deciding to join your team.

It will help increase the knocks on the door, whether it's from recruiters or from potential employers who have heard of you or remember you and have an opportunity that will be interesting.

When I spoke with Annie, as example, on the roundtable discussion, she noted that all of the jobs that she's received came from people who she'd worked with in the past, and that is an example where that brand had carried forward. She also sits on a number of advisory boards, formal board roles. She is an investor in a few companies, all of these things come because of brand.

So brand really matters, but it's not something that you can instantly generate, and create. And maybe the last thing I'd say about brand is that jobs come and go, but your brand kind of is an aggregate of each of those jobs. Sometimes I describe [00:04:00] it as each job might be a chapter. Your brand is kind of how the book is coming together.

And so why I like talking and thinking about brand is that it's more durable than how you're doing at a given company. And so in some ways, let's say you're struggling at a company because the company is struggling, or maybe it's a bad fit. It still might be brand additive. Gives you a lot of knowledge, connects with a new group perhaps. Pulls you into a new domain, maybe during the struggle, you end up, having a skill that you didn't have before. Those are all brand additive, but if you look at it purely from whether the job was a success, you may not see it as quite the same way. So brand has this durability, has this sort of ability to open up new doors. And it frankly is a bit of this tailwind that you want to have to continue to expand your career impact.

Julie: That makes sense. I guess the next step is to think through how I should go about building my brand. Before chatting, I did some research and it confirmed my nagging worry that I'm definitely not investing in my brand as much as I should. Like if we look at [00:05:00] some AI tools, both ChatGPT and Claude told me I should be active on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Some direct quotes include, find speaking engagements, create a newsletter and or podcast, and attend networking events. I definitely see people do this in our industry, but just to be super candid, that's just not me. I'm not good at that stuff. It's not fun for me, it's exhausting to think about, and I definitely don't make time for it.

Honestly, the whole thing is a bit depressing, so like, I know I need a brand to get ahead in my career, but do I really need to become an influencer? And if I don't, do I just stay as a nobody? I would love your help untangling this and figuring it all out.

Nikhyl: Yeah. I have to say when I did research for this episode and I started talking to folks that were trying to understand how to navigate establishing brand, most common thing that came back was that brand was somehow synonymous with being an influencer. How many followers you had, or how often you tweet, or did you end up creating a sub [00:06:00] stack or podcast? there is this pattern that if you weren't investing in those channels, and you weren't writing, and you weren't speaking, and you weren't attending, you weren't investing in brand. And I actually just think that's inaccurate, maybe we'll do this simple exercise. Think about the best professionals that you've encountered, or think about the executives that sit in companies that you admire.

Most of them are not particularly known to the industry as a whole. Most of them don't have a podcast. Most of them don't have huge number of followers on LinkedIn or don't tweet very often. in my experience, if I rank the sort of top 100 product people, the vast majority, 90 percent plus don't have time or don't have skill to invest in becoming an influencer as well. I mean, you do one thing at one time.

In fact, most of the influencers, if we now flip the equation and you find who are the people that are most vocal and product that are out there speaking, [00:07:00] communicating, driving content, most of them are sort of semi retired.

And maybe I use that term even for myself, where they've had a successful career, were not influencers, were not investing in those channels. Had a number of positions and then they end up using this as the sort of new act or final act of their career or frankly, they were mid career as operators and they just chose to become influencers.

They're totally different skills. my first and most important note is you don't have to become an influencer to have brand. and in this case, Julie, you described that it's not fun for you to do that type of work, nor is it a priority. So don't do it.

I think that one of the big parts of establishing brand is to be authentic. and that came out consistently through my research. If you want to have an effective brand, it needs to be something that you enjoy investing in, it needs to be connected to your real skills. It needs to be something that you [00:08:00] enjoy fostering. And of course it needs to be built over the long.

So to summarize, you don't have to be an influencer to have a great brand and moreover, those influencers aren't getting a lot of those roles or opportunities that you're looking for anyway.

Julie: You know, that's super comforting to hear. I really do think there's a gap between just keeping my head down and doing good work and having a powerful personal brand. But like, while it's good to hear that I don't need to start a career as an influencer on the side, what do I need to do to bridge the gap?

Nikhyl: Okay. Great question. And one of the key points that Iska made was that there's a distinction between reputation and brand.

So I'm going to introduce that now because I found it really helpful to help us navigate to what we should be actioning on. Reputation that you have is built over the day to day interactions, the successes and wins that you have in your current workplace built through the relationships of those that know your work the best, your manager, your peers, your coworkers, those that know your project.

By definition, [00:09:00] reputation is built over years, in fact, over decades, and it's hard to influence because it's so long term or orientation. This apparently makes sense, and it's in contrast to brand. Think of brand as what people say about you who don't know you easier to control because it's based on investments that you are actually making versus reputation, which is something that people who know your work are saying where you don't have as much control over it, but it is directly based on your work and your activities over the long.

Maybe another way of illustrating it is think of reputation as the product and think of brand as the product marketing. Naturally with that sort of framework in mind, your reputation is table stakes to having a strong brand.

It's hard to believe that if someone doesn't have a strong reputation based on what coworkers say about their work. That somehow that'll translate into lots of opportunities downstream.

So you clearly need to start with a great reputation, but to answer your question, it's not sufficient.

You just can't have a [00:10:00] great reputation, keep your head down and hope that you'll have all the doors possibly open to you that you need.

So you need an investment in reputation and investment in brand, but they have very different tactics associated with it.

In some way, I think about it as the cream will rise to the top. This is sort of the reputation, but it won't jump from carton to coffee mug. you need to take some proactive action to take reputation and market it to reach the people that don't know you, that can really take you forward.

so then the next thing maybe worth digging into is what factors create a solid reputation and how much of that can I really influence?

Nikhyl: Yeah, let's narrow in on how to improve or establish a super solid reputation in your workplace. You do have a fair amount of influence, you just can't control it. You can't control how people speak about your work, but there are some obvious must haves that will definitively impact your reputation. The 1st to have a strong internal reputation is you have to be crushing it in the [00:11:00] role that you've been given. There is no shortcut here. you want people to say that, look, we've given you relatively little guidance. Given you a target to hit they're able to sort of just get stuff done.

I think that that plus the characteristics of reliability and consistency. Or just sort of the foundation for having a solid reputation, like who doesn't want a coworker who they can give a problem to see things get delivered and ultimately do that on a consistent basis where they just don't have to put a lot of energy into making sure that the work is done correctly. That's the starting point that all of you need to do.

So, Julie, if you're looking to establish reputation, that's my first question. Are you crushing it? are you really nailing it in the job that you have been given?

Now, the second is the behaviors that you get your work done with because reputation is not just what you got done, but the values and the ethics and the approach that you use to get those things done. there's a few things, for example, that really amplify your reputation, sharing credit, supporting [00:12:00] others, going outside the call of duty. Ensuring that you're not just in it for yourself, but you're trying to uplift your team, the opposite also is true. if you take too much credit for the successes at work, or if you are very insular and you don't partner well, those are going to really detract your reputation.

When it comes to reputation, there's a few things that really impact it

so within your company, you're trying to not only influence the people that directly know your work, but maybe some folks that are in adjacent groups. And so if you're given a choice between two projects. One project where you impact a handful of people and another project, which is going to pull you into working with lots of different types of people, lots of different functions, lots of different, perhaps, sister organizations. That's very helpful for your reputation. For example, Annie mentioned that, choosing those projects has a natural tailwind to your reputation because you're touching more people.

And again, if you have this attitude and you get things done again, your reputation starts to [00:13:00] build. Obviously, the reverse is detrimental playing politics, playing games, burning bridges.

These things people notice and immediately tanks your reputation. Similarly, when you pull feedback and act on feedback and you improve in real time, people notice that.

While, if you're very much stuck in your ways, that also detracts from your reputation. So you can see that, though, these are all things that are important for every employee to keep in mind, they tend to have an amplified view when it comes to reputation, how you carry your business, how reliable, how much you get things done. And then ultimately, are you able to take feedback?

Take other teams, bring them along, amplify their work. these are all very important characteristics that make you not only pleasant and effective, but also start building a buzz that reputation, which will carry forward into the brand investments that you want to make.

Julie: yeah, these make sense. And like, all of them are consistent with my punch [00:14:00] list of becoming a great professional. So what you're basically saying is that the better I am at my job and the more I'm recognized, the better. But just to add to that, are there things that can jumpstart my. reputation or change its trajectory? I'm not looking for a quick fix, but I still worry that what I'm currently doing isn't going to establish a strong reputation. I guess like, let me frame it another way. Those that have a solid reputation seem to be proactive in building it, right?

Nikhyl: That's a great question. And it goes to the heart of what are the perhaps unnatural acts that all of you that are listening, Julie included, all of you should be taking into account as you think about establishing your brand.

So one is to do with the network that you're building within your company. and the second has to do with the job you've chosen and the type of challenges that you seek.

Okay. So when it comes to network, iska and Annie both described thinking of their company as almost like a professional social network.

This is consistent with my advice that the number one regret people have when they look back to prior [00:15:00] jobs is not connecting with enough people. Because if you play things forward, the people that you work with today, particularly the exceptional ones will go places.

Some that are early in their career will become very mature and very successful. Some that are mid career will move from one leadership role to another. There is a fair amount of mobility in our tech world.

And as a result, you're essentially in one frame, one, scene of the movie with your coworkers, but because they'll go on to play out other scenes, other movies, you definitively want to make an impression.

But most people aren't putting enough time into that. This is the opposite advice to going out and podcasting or being on Twitter. This is the advice of look, make sure that if you're doing good, solid work at your company, that people around the company, take notice, go find other leaders and other projects to make sure that you're seeing where you can help them to make sure they understand your project. Work with [00:16:00] your peers and other groups and other departments. Make sure that you're going on sales calls. Make sure you're taking projects, as we mentioned before, that naturally pull you into conversations with folks that you don't know, when you find yourself in those situations, take advantage of it, build a relationship, get to know those people.

A concerted effort can really play out. Why? Many of the leaders that I speak with both Annie and Iska made this point. Almost all of the jobs that they've received have come through people that they've worked with in the past.

That's the key realization if you increase the number of people who know your reputation at your current company, and then play things forward, it's likely they will end up needing someone like yourself and suggest to their employer or themselves or personally connect with you to say, Hey, we need someone like yourself. You really [00:17:00] impressed me. I'd love to have you part of this new adventure. That's the most effective way that your reputation can serve you.

But it does require you to take this unnatural act to make sure that as many solid people at your company know your work and keep in mind the junior folks that exist at your company could be more valuable to you than the senior folks.

So for example, some of the individual contributors, peers that are in your team, people that even may work for you. May end up going out and founding a company down the road and they might be quite successful. There are lots of examples where I've met folks that were interns that have turned out to be C level executives or founding CEOs of terrific companies. And I met them when I was senior and they were just getting started, but because we ended up connecting, perhaps I was able to help them. Perhaps I was able to learn about their project.

Those things carry forward they really appreciate the fact that you spent the [00:18:00] time and that can create some goodwill that ultimately fast forward, really carries your reputation to new places.

the second piece of advice comes down to what I'm calling choosing a peak role versus a path role. So what's a peak role? in any company, there are one or two projects that are on fire.

These are the most important at a given time. For the trajectory of the company, they have a ton of visibility, the stakes are high, executives are paying attention, resources are available. The pace is very, very high on these and the scrutiny is 10x more than any of the other roles. There's a lot riding on these projects.

The leaders and individual contributors that are on these project are working harder and have a lot more at risk, but success in these peak roles, are 10 times more valuable than the path [00:19:00] roles.

So what are path roles? Well, these are the other 90 of the roles that are out there. And that's not to say that there isn't important work being done. oftentimes those are the roles that keep the lights on, but these top 10 are unusual and they're obviously by definition, scarce.

So why do I describe the distinction is that when I see people that had a step function in their reputation, it's because they succeeded in these peak roles. When they were chosen, they worked incredibly hard to succeed in these roles.

And when they succeeded, it was a force multiplier in their overall reputation. Why? because they crushed something that really mattered to their company and everyone was paying attention.

So it was a front page project and they won. So this is the second piece of advice. if you're looking to really accelerate your reputation, let's say you've worked at a company for a few years, you're trusted, you know, how things are done, seek out one of these peak roles.

[00:20:00] It's going to be a grind. It's gonna be risky, but once you succeed in those roles, you don't look the same to the company. You're on the short list of leaders that are chosen for the next important thing. And you've jumpstarted your trajectory. Similarly, if you've never been chosen for those positions, or if you don't enjoy those types of roles, then your reputation is going to continue to grow linearly, just with the people that you come in contact with.

So again, you're asking for unnatural acts. When I talk to the C level execs, almost everyone points to, yeah, my career was going in one direction

and then I had a role, which really transformed me. In my personal career, that was when I went to Google and I was associated with hangouts and I was associated with photos. Both of them were huge priorities for the company because they were really important. we were investing heavily in social and both of these apps were part of our new consumer [00:21:00] strategy. And so succeeding on those projects instantly validated my skills.

It dramatically impacted my reputation, nearly all the roles that came after that, the first sentence or two that people would mention is, oh, well, that was the person that was heavily responsible for the work that we did on hangouts, the work that we did in the early days on photos and these two products changed the trajectory of my career.

Now, of course, it sort of builds on itself. The next job obviously is at a higher profile position. Success there now creates a story. Wow. This person really is able to put out hits.

And so this is why I'm saying to you that look, not only proactively find people to know your work, but if you can choose a peak role, you'll never look back. Even if you don't succeed, people will know your work at a much higher rate than if you were in a path role.

If you get things [00:22:00] done, if you bring people along, if you have all those core fundamentals, we describe in establishing a solid reputation, but now it's against a much broader, much more senior audience because of the priority and the criticality of this peak project that you're associated with.

It will again, amplify, even if the success of the project isn't there, your behaviors will shine through. And maybe last note here is some companies don't have those priority projects or they're not available to you.

That might be a reason to seek another company. For example, perhaps you need to be in one of these peak roles. But you have to take risks because you have to join a smaller company. Or a company that may not be as successful that might help your reputation dramatically because the health of the company might be weaker, but the visibility of your project is 10 times larger than being just a cog in the wheel of your existing employer. So to expand your [00:23:00] reputation dramatically, it might require you to even change companies.

Julie: Now you're getting into some of your tough love. Sounds like it's not just about doing great work, but that you really need to like ensure you're known by the right people within the company. Also, what I'm hearing is that I need to establish myself on the most crucial projects in my company to really expand my reputation

Nikhyl: Yeah. I mean, if you're in a dark corner of your company people won't notice you, everyone's busy. So they're paying attention to their projects and the most critical projects of the company.

And if our goal is to establish a solid and expanded reputation within our employer, then the goal is to make sure that you're noticed. And that can be knocking on doors, but it's slow.

So this is the fast track option of you're jumping on one of the top projects and everyone's going to see you, whether you like it or not. And by the way the people that do select these peak roles, they tend to be some of the best people at the company, and they tend to fast forward, go places.

So this is the [00:24:00] reason why I consistently see that people choose the hard, visible projects to succeed in, which does change the trajectory of their reputation in a pretty powerful way.

Julie: Speaking of being proactive, you mentioned that building brand is something I can control. I think you said something like reputation is my product, and brand is the product marketing. I guess now that I understand how to establish a solid reputation, how should I go about crafting my brand?

Nikhyl: Yeah. So as a reminder, reputation is really based on the people that surround you that know your work, the people on your project, people, largely within your company.

So in many ways, brand is influencing those that you don't know, those that haven't met you and that are essentially hearing about you.

The principles of marketing a product apply to marketing yourself. So these are going to sound familiar to any marketers out there.

You know, the first thing we need to start with is what's our brand strategy and what are the goals? You know, the goal might be to make sure that my [00:25:00] next job is as fabulous as it could be, you know, I want the biggest job at the best company. So the people that I want to influence are the recruiters. And those are the stories and those are the signals that I wanted. Versus, for example, I want to influence startups and I want to invest one day in the next startup. I want to make sure that founding CEOs and investors know my work. Perhaps you're trying to change from one department to another, say product marketing and product management.

In that case, you want to be noticed by those that have influence in the desired function that you're trying to get into. Now, that's sort of the target audience. Now, our brand strategy is very much around what makes you different. How are you unique? What is your superpowers that will

make people pay attention?

Here are the types of problems you've solved. Here's a level of guidance that we would give you. Here's how many other people would perhaps be able to step in and solve the same problem.

Now, once we have these [00:26:00] superpowers, we need to start telling these stories. And I've covered storytelling in a previous episode. It's a crucial part to not only ensuring you maximize career, but it heavily plays into the brand story that you're telling about yourself. And just like any marketing, we need to know what we're selling, and then we need to know who we're selling to. So again, what we're selling is not just your superpowers, but it's all of the wins that you've had in the office. It's the empathy that you've had with other groups. It's the abilities that you've had that show you're able to get really hands on. You're able to scale up whatever successes you have are all these raw materials.

And what we're trying to do is create these very clear, but distinct stories for these different target audiences that remain authentic and that remain humble. Those stories with the target audiences in mind will help you build your brand.

Julie: And this does feel a little like core marketing [00:27:00] principles. Figure out who I want to target, why I'm the winning product, and find the right story and tone to connect those two. But maybe just to dumb it down, how do I know if I should go to the next conference in my field, or hit up a podcaster to be a guest on their show, or start tweeting?

You mentioned it's unnecessary to become an influencer, but it sounds like I do need to find some way for my brand to get out there to the world.

Nikhyl: Yeah, you have to be proactive. There's no doubt. So let's say that you're interested in getting that next job and that's what you want your brand to be able to provide. We have a solid reputation. Now what we're doing is we're targeting recruiters.

Now we have our story that we've assembled for the recruiter that shows our successes, it shows our superpowers, and it shows our ability to scale. The first thing you want to do is start responding to the recruiters that are reaching you on LinkedIn, or maybe cold calling you and actually say that, look, you're not actively looking, but make sure they know your story.

Why does that matter? Because one day you will be actively looking and one day they [00:28:00] will have a role. And so what you're essentially doing is connecting with your target audience, with your personal story and trying to build some momentum.

It doesn't have to be purely reactive though. Think about the next job that you desire. Think about who recruits for them or what leaders are one degree away from those positions. Go and start establishing. You relationships with them through the story you've constructed. Again, it's not just your reputation. You're removing 80 percent and amplifying the 20 percent that are most critical for that audience.

Now, if you're trying to reach startups, because you're trying to invest. Or you're trying to find a co founder, well, you would use a very different angle because recruiters don't frequent that area. So in that example, you should ask yourself, well, where do founders hang out?

Maybe there are conferences you should now be attending. Maybe you should be a little bit more active on social media if that was your case.

And you have something important and interesting to say. Relationships, the [00:29:00] venture capital might be really critical in this example, which is in contrast that if you're trying to move into a new domain, like say product management from another function, you'd want to be known to the people that are right now in product management. The story you'll tell the tactics you use will be super, super different, there is no shortcut. You need to be proactive, but you don't need to blast out on every channel, a generic story.

What you're trying to do is target exactly based on what you're trying to achieve. Who are you trying to get to? What message is specific to them, and how do you determine which channel is the best one to reach that group? Also, keep in mind that with this clarity, you can go out to your former employers. You can go out to people that are your friends or your network and actually say, look, I'm really interested in reaching more startups. Love for you to connect me to the right folks, knowing that you have a message tailored to them, email your friends, email your network and essentially say, Hey, I'd love for you to forward this to the folks that you may know. And that's a [00:30:00] great way to target and jumpstart your brand. Again, specific to the goal that you have in mind.

But note, it does sound like a fair amount of work. But I always tell people, look, put 30 minutes on your calendar once a week to do this type of investment to meet someone that's targeted that might be helpful to you down the road, or that you might be able to help today.

That 30 minutes is something that's easily findable in your calendar. There's going to be countless number of meetings that you won't remember the next week.

These might transform your career, but they require a fair amount of ongoing investment. So that's where brand building really comes in. So now with this strategy, you can really see how with a target with 30 minutes a week and with this consistent effort, you can really expand your brand.

Julie: My initial reaction is that sounds hard but plausible. The good news is that a spray and pray approach of being everywhere doesn't make sense. If I want another job, I don't have to be on the next [00:31:00] podcast or at a conference. Sounds like I can simply talk with recruiters and people at other companies and ensure they're hearing my story.

And that like, I don't have to wait until I'm ready to find my next role, but also don't need to go to every conference, hoping to become known in the meantime.

Okay, final question for you. I know you coach a number of female product executives. I've seen the list on the Skip community and there are many people there with brands that I admire. I can't help but wonder though if you've seen differences in brand building between men and women.

Nikhyl: it's a great question. One that I spent a fair amount of time talking to leaders about both men and women, and this came up in our conversation, even in our round table between myself Annie Iska since then done a little bit of research, talking to other folks on the skip community to try to understand what are those differences.

I think the 1st thing we have to acknowledge is that there is a fairly substantive amount of bias, particularly when it comes to men versus women and their leadership styles. take what I would call aggressive [00:32:00] behavior, a highly opinionated assertive woman often is tagged as pushy or bossy the same exact behaviors for men can be considered aggressive go getter, you see this all the time play out. I personally have had even this bias myself. and I've been working on making sure that I'm very aware that this bias exists. another example is where emotion fits into the office. oftentimes the superpowers that women bring into the offices. soft skills, connecting with people, being able to build and establish true, authentic relationships are a huge part of being a leader and sometimes emotions that exist in an individual can really help you connect with that individual with other people within your company and build those relationships, et cetera.

And those emotions can be a huge power, that can actually elevate and escalate their careers, but it can also hold them back because they can be perceived as being weak. And so these biases exist.

But most importantly, I think these are [00:33:00] landmines that men don't consistently have to work through. So I would just acknowledge that men have more freedom when it comes to establishing a reputation than women have because of these biases that exist on either side.

This lane, is a little narrower, what we aspire to is to be a thoughtful, accomplished leader who is equally good as their male colleagues, but different in the way they approach the problem.

What you're trying to avoid is extremes. You're trying to avoid a situation where you're perceived as too nice or you're perceived with sharp elbows. our goal is to not be the female leader in the organization, but to be the best leader in the organization.

What Annie and Iska both suggested is avoiding marketing oneselves as the female leader or trying to be so male like that you lose the distinctions in your style and personality and strengths than others.

[00:34:00] Ultimately, it's all about qualifications and not avoiding or leaning into gender in the workplace. But again, for women, I believe that there's more crafting and more strategy that's required to avoid the extreme stereotypes that end up being applied within the workplace.

Julie: And a key takeaway for me exiting this conversation is that I'm not so stressed about becoming an influencer.

Instead, I'm already thinking of a few people at the company who I should build a relationship with, and I'm going to look for a project that's higher profile than the one that I was on. Also, I'm like realizing that I might be the mom on the team, like I take the notes and volunteer to organize all our meetups.

What I'm hearing is that's one of those brands I should be avoiding.

Nikhyl: Yeah, I think you summarized it well. You don't want others to define your brand. You want to remain authentic. You want to ensure you focus on doing great work. You want to look for those peak roles that are career amplifying. You ultimately need to think [00:35:00] about the role that you want to get next or what you want your brand to enable, and then be very strategic, working backwards on who are the people that you want to influence, what stories are you going to tell them based on the wins and the superpowers that you have in your career?

And then what channels do they pay attention to? That's the strategy, the marketing of your brand based on your reputation. And ultimately you want to ensure your narrative is as balanced as possible and avoid any kind of biases and stereotypes and leveraging gender one way or the other in your narrative.

Hopefully you found this conversation on personal brand to be helpful. it's a tricky topic. There is no shortcut, but I do think that with the right amount of strategy and focus and a long term mindset, you can expand your brand and establish a terrific reputation. I'm Nikhyl Singhal, and this has been The Skip.

If today's episode resonated with you, please consider leaving a review [00:36:00] or sharing it with the people you know, who want more out of their career. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you currently listen. You can also follow my newsletter on Substack, and if you have questions or feedback, leave a comment or send me a note on LinkedIn, Threads, or Twitter. I try to answer each one directly. As always, I'm Nikhyl and this has been The Skip.