We’re continuing the Higher⚡️Voltage speaker party with today’s guest, my good friend Sapna Pieroux! 

Sapna Pieroux is a brand consultant at InnerVisions ID, the bestselling author of “Let's Get Visible!”, and creator of the VISION branding method. She guides us through all of that today, as well as how she built her own personal brand, what she was doing before, and what's coming next on Sapna’s own brand journey (hint, it's going to become much, much easier for you to work with her!).

Sapna will be speaking at my Higher⚡️Voltage event for solopreneurs at Battersea Power Station in London on January 22, 2026! She’ll talk about building your business brand alongside your personal brand–which is something you can also hear more about on today’s episode.

Come see Sapna speak at Higher Voltage!

In this episode:

• The differences between a personal brand and business brand when someone is their business
• Should I lead with my personal brand or should I lead with my business brand?
• What Sapna was doing before and how it led to her current business, InnerVisions ID
• Motherhood, depression, and retraining to be an interior designer
• “I did his branding and…he came back with seven business cards” 
• Publishing “Let's Get Visible!” in 2020
• The campaign and award that got Sapna’s book noticed
• Sapna’s VISION methodology
• BrandVisions.AI
• How to approach creating a business brand vs. a personal brand 
• What Sapna will teach you at Higher Voltage 
• What Sapna ultimately delivers to clients on a deeper level
• What lights Sapna up in her work
• What Sapna won’t include in her personal brand
• What Sapna would do if she were guaranteed to succeed
• How Christine and Sapna initially bonded

Find Sapna:

LinkedIn 

Join the BrandVisions.AI beta

Come party with The NotWorkers 

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I took a little bit of an unplanned hiatus from Let's Talk About Brand, but now I'm getting back into it!

Today’s guest, Janine Coombes, is one of the incredible speakers at my Higher⚡️Voltage event for solopreneurs, happening at Battersea Power Station in London on January 22, 2026 (Dani, Sophie, and Teresa are all speaking too, and I’ll be having Sapna and Hannah on in coming weeks!).

(Janine’s been on before, but the show was a slightly different format then, so it felt like time for a new episode!)

Janine also happens to be someone I actually work with–she’s helped me detangle a lot about my offerings and how I present them! I am one of the "coach shaped people" she helps, and in this interview we get into what that means, how she helps, and how her first book, "The Easy Yes," came about.

We also talk about Janine’s personal talents, what lights her up about doing the work that she does, how she came to do the work that she does, and also how she became known for it. Because it's great if you're brilliant, but if nobody knows who you are or what you do, that's not gonna do you a whole lot of good. 

​ 

Come see Janine speak at Higher⚡️Voltage!

In this episode:

• What are "coach shaped people"? 
• Why does Janine enjoy working with “coach shaped people” most?
• The turning point that led Janine to working for herself
• “What I missed for an embarrassingly long time was actually having something solid that people could actually buy!”
• Gaining visibility…but without offers
• “Perhaps wear a set of pearls…”
• “The Easy Yes” offer matrix
• “At the ready point, what does it look like?...create content that calls to that and then you can work back”
• What's next for Janine 
• What Janine hopes to leave the Higher Voltage audience with in January
• What Janine truly delivers
• What gives Janine a real sense of satisfaction in her work
• “The C word” (it’s not cancer…or c**t)
• What she’d do if she were guaranteed to succeed at it (I love this one! -C)

Find Janine:

LinkedIn

JanineCoombes.co.uk 

easy-yes.com

❤️

Come see Janine speak at Higher Voltage!

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrew and Pete became best friends 15 years ago at uni, and have never held a job beyond running their own business together. How did they quickly build to the point where, in under a decade, they’d spoken on huge international stages, amassed a community of thousands, and created one of the largest conferences in the UK?

Well, you'll hear it from them, but a huge part of it is sheer gumption. They talk about how they made big asks, swung for the fences, and leveraged other people's kindness in the best possible ways. And of course, the way they received that kindness was by showing up with value first.

We’ll also hear about how they went from highly-paid speaking events and growing their global community to now hosting one of the UK's largest conferences for small businesses, ATOMICON.

(ATOMICON25 has now passed, but you can grab your early-bird ticket NOW for ATOMICON26! Use my affiliate link and I’ll buy you a drink in Newcastle…)

In this episode:

• “...that very first moment where I walked into the kitchen and Andrew is putting away his Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in the cupboard…”
• First business (motivational texts!)
• Branding agency 
• “We'd throw chocolate across the room and we'd do little fun presentations and poems and wraps, and we'd do like, you know, some silly things to get attention.”
• From local networking meetings to speaking at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego. 
• Big Domino Theory
• “We stalked those 10 people religiously for about two or three weeks..”
• Organizing their first big conference (online)
• “We were just gutsy. We had nothing to lose when we were 24 of putting ourselves out there.”
• Growing the  Atomic community
• Focusing on doing one thing really remarkably at a time
• Launching Atomicon…with an expectation of 80 people
• Being really deliberate about putting on the best event possible, and never getting complacent
• Their current growth plan for the foreseeable future
• What lights Andrew up
• What lights Pete up
• What people get out of Atomicon beyond what’s on the tin
• Moving from a personal brand to a brand-brand

Find Andrew and Pete:

ATOMICON26 (affiliate link)

Atomic

Instagram

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anytime there's an update to Facebook (or even a rumored feature!), thousands hightail it to Mari Smith's profiles to see what she has to say about it. 

But how did Mari establish such authority in the world of Meta marketing? How did she build her name professionally to become “the” Facebook guru? Why was Facebook the platform she chose to build her career on?

What did she do before Facebook⏤and what might she do after?  

As with all good, aligned personal brands, the same motivating forces have guided Mari throughout her journey. Primary among those forces is her fascination with human relationships. 

Relationships got her to the United States to begin with. Relationships enabled her to explore a variety of career paths. Relationships have always been the core of her interest in Facebook; she does love tech, but the thing that has always fascinated her most about Facebook is its power as a connection tool.

But as you'll hear, Mari's also looking more at the impact of social media on mental health, relationships, and society⏤for better and for worse.

This is definitely an interview that you have not heard Mari give before. We delve into her personal story, her varied professional background, and her unfiltered takes on Meta, marketing, and what’s next.

In this episode:

• Leaving Scotland for San Diego (with no money or job)
• Saved by the Cake!
• Bartering for legal help
• “From cakes to lawyers to a mobile disc jockey…”
• SEO Master
• “My love and my tech”
• “Mari, you, you can't be Miss Email Marketing, technology, internet and relationships⏤you gotta pick a lane!”
• Discovering Facebook
• Her first Facebook Marketing for Professionals course
• The power of early Facebook networking (and the DMs!)
• “I just love to teach and to explain!”
• Human Design and 10-year cycles
• “I'm going all in with this.” 
• Mike Stelzner and Social Media Marketing World
• Why Mari has remained focus on organic social media
• Facebook vs. other platforms
• Mari’s current career transition
• “Mental wellness, mental health, and specifically, ironically, social media's impact and isolation and loneliness and depression…”
• “I just know how to market!”
• What has driven Mari in all phases of her life and career
• Why people trust her
• The public, the personal, and the private

Find Mari:

Website

Facebook 

Instagram

Mari Smith’s Superstars community

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today I'm talking to a fellow personal branding person (which means so many different things to so many different people!): Sophie Lee, founder of Electric Peach! 

Sophie doesn't just want to help people who are interested in making money. She’s putting the powerful brand storytelling tools she’s learned how to leverage over her career into the hands of people who are trying to change the world for the better: mission-driven, impact-driven businesses and female founders with something to say.

(She is also a fellow disco-ball-loving, collaboration-not-competition, sparkly badass; you can see why we get along!) ❤️

One of the themes we discuss over and over in this episode is about what it means to use one's voice. Sophie is all about empowerment of people's voices, specifically people who want to make positive changes in the world, and helping them harness the power of communication to do just that. Hearing Sophie’s journey makes it clear not only that she really knows her stuff, but also that she’s finely honed her personal values, her sense of self, and her own commitment to using these tools for good.

In this episode:

• Teaching English to the Czech government
• Joining the Disney “cult” in Shanghai
• “Journalism” in China
• The UK press’s misery machine
• Accidentally becoming a marketer
• The entrepreneurial bug
• A toxic relationship, and a new business partnership
• Becoming known for UGC (user-generated content)
• Building The Joyful for actual purpose-driven businesses
• Becoming Sophie Lee and Electric Peach
• Communication instead of polarization
• Empowering people to communicate their messages with passion and clarity
• What Sophie shares

Find Sophie:

Instagram

LinkedIn

Electric Peach

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve known Amanda Webb of Spider Working for years. While she started as a digital marketing generalist, Amanda has really built her name for data and analytics in recent years, especially Google Analytics (for which she is a certified trainer with Enterprise Nation).

But, like many of us, Amanda didn’t start out in marketing, and she shares how her time in the film industry and a small business owner helped her build the tenacity and skills that eventually helped her launch her own successful consulting and speaking business, becoming globally known as an expert on how to make sense of analytics and succeed with data-driven marketing strategies.

Of course, we also discuss what lights Amanda up, what she truly delivers beyond just marketing insights, and what cats have to do with any of it (spoiler alert: not much, and she likes it that way!).

In this episode:

• “That's me: I am going to be the next Mike Lee!”
• Hustling to get those union tickets signed (including in the pubs)
• The importance of persistence
• “Let's face it…I'm never going to be the female Mike Lee.”
• “I know! I'll start a business!”
• Death of a Saleswoman
• “You’re not coming up on Google…”
• Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging
• An opportunity in recession
• “I was everywhere”
• Getting more widely known via video
• Irish Blog Awards
• Agorapulse, Social Media Marketing World, Meta and Google (via Enterprise Nation)
• Helping people feel clever
• Cats, knitting, film, and boundaries

Find Amanda:

• LinkedIn
• Website
• That Analytics Podcast
• That Analytics Show

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is The Queen Bee herself, Ms. Dani Wallace! 

Dani is a speaking coach who runs the I Am The Queen Bee community and The Big Festoon event. 

She delivers confidence. She delivers encouragement. She delivers badassery. But what she truly delivers, at the root of all she does, is to deliver the message that success can feel safe.

Her event, The Big Festoon, certainly does that. Her community does that. She's even got a documentary film, “The Festoon Effect,”  about what she does and the message she's spreading.

Dani definitely comes across as someone who is fully confident in the value of her own message and in her own authority to do what she's doing out here–but, as you'll hear, she's just like the rest of us deep down. She experiences self-doubt and energetic crashes. But she also recognizes the importance of the message she’s here on this earth to deliver, and the empowerment the sense of community she creates brings to others.

In this episode:

• The council estates of Preston
• Traveling the world as a performer
• Call center training
• Domestic abuse and homelessness with two children under the age of two 
• “Life is either going to continue happening to me or I'm going to happen to life.“
• Gigging singer to early live-streamer (and mascara seller!)
• “Show up, wise up, rise up”
• Safety in success
• Sharing her learnings
• An “overnight success” 10 years in the making
• Overcoming daily self-doubt
• Creating what she needed most via The Big Festoon
• “I’m really famous…”
• Fly Anyway Foundation
• Collaborations
• Releasing her own film
• Smashing the patriarchy
• Telling your story while bringing actual value to the world
• Creating that “joy space” that helps cement actual learning
• Owning her origin story without leaning on it
• The one thing about Dani’s energy you’d never guess!

Find Dani:

Instagram

“The Festoon Effect” documentary

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I started the season back in September with a solo episode⏤and I realized I didn't really give you as much of the goods as I really should have.

I did tell my professional story, I went through all of that history, and I even answered my own “searching” personal branding questions about my “why.” 

What I didn't do is really get into the nitty-gritty of how I built my professional presence. 

So we're going to take a walk down memory lane as to how I grew my own personal brand visibility, and hopefully some of these tactics can help you build yours  as well.

In this episode:

• The beginning of Christine Gritmon Inc. in May 2016
• “Be visible doing the thing that you want to be known for doing”
• “Say yes to opportunities!”
• How I pivoted my personal brand 
• “People who knew, liked and trusted me were up for coming along on this new journey because I focused on transferable skills and transferable values.”
• Deciding who I was going to learn from
• Networking before, during, and after events
• “Don't think that speakers are these untouchable people who are on this whole other plane of existence from yourself. Go talk to them!”
• “A slightly outdated tactic: I live-Tweeted events…”
• Becoming a conduit to information. 
• Put yourself in the conversation and connect with others who are also part of that conversation
• Rebranding (again!) to personal branding
• “Take a look periodically at making sure everything is aligned” the things that you're offering, the audience you're offering it to, the audience you have, the things that you are doing. Make sure that it's all pointing in the same direction.” 
• “What worked in the US isn't going to work here…”
• “Don't be afraid to realign, but make sure that you have something built on the fundamentals, the foundations that people have come to know you and trust you for, those transferable skills.”
• “Don't be afraid to show up.”

Find Me:

Website

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The word “empowerment” comes up a lot in this interview with online business-building coach Teresa Heath-Wareing! Teresa is all about empowering people, including herself, to live the lives they want to lead via building their online businesses.

I've known Teresa for a long time, and her messaging has been remarkably consistent over the years. We discuss how she built her business up to the level of reputation and success she enjoys now, how she chooses where to place her energy, and her constant commitment to bringing excellence to everyone she encounters. We also discuss her decision to release a more personal podcast earlier this year and how she decides what she does and doesn’t share as part of both her personal and business lives.

In this episode:

• Teresa’s first personal brand as an employee 
• “I basically started from fear and having my back up against the wall and knowing I need to make money…”
• “They sort of borderline stalked you!”
• What made people buy in to Teresa in the early days
• Learning from the experts
• Getting clients from speaking…then not getting clients from speaking
• Saying yes to opportunities
• “...doing the small stuff and working your way up to it”
• The Hustle: gift bags, selfies, and flying 5,000 miles for coffee
• Choosing what opportunities to say yes or no to
• Why marketing?
• Delivering empowerment
• Her sobriety journey and “Losing Parts Of Myself” podcast
• What she will and won’t share

Find Teresa:

Instagram

LinkedIn

teresaheathwareing.com 

Your Dream Business podcast

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know I love having a chance to speak with non-marketers!

(Then again, is there truly such a thing in the world of personal branding?)

Ophira Edut has held many titles: teenage streetwear creator, artist, writer, graphic designer, web developer, magazine editor, feminist anthologist, author, and globally-acclaimed astrologer, just to name a few. We discuss her organic journey between all of these worlds, her motivations, key moments of recognition, and of course the companionship of her identical twin sister, Tali, with whom Ophira shared almost all of these adventures.

The biggest message of Ophira's story is: do what you do, put your creativity out there into the world–and if opportunities arise from it, say YES to them!

Hear about:

• Growing up an identical twin in a Middle Eastern family in the Midwest
• Winning allllllllll the contests
• Denim Rebellion and Double Vision
• (and Urban Outfitters and Raven-Symoné)
• Getting “Sassy” in NYC
• Hues Magazine
• Back to NY & getting online
• Astrology as personal insight…
• …and personal brand…
• …and science.
• Gloria Steinem!
• Ms. Magazine
• “Adios, Barbie”
• Teen Vogue and the birth of the AstroTwins brand
• “Astro Style”
• Astrology as a conduit for connection
• AstroStyle.com
• Syndication
• Elle Magazine
• Why Beyonce and Jay Z are still together (it was in the stars!)
• Bringing individual skills to a joint brand
• Tapping into commonalities
• Providing hope and guidance

Find Ophira:

Astrostyle.com 

“The Astrology Advantage”

Instagram

TikTok

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fab Giovanetti bounds onto any stage she’s invited to “excited and excitable as a Labrador every single day”⏤and it’s highly contagious!

On this episode we discuss how Fab transitioned from hiding behind a community she’d built for health and wellness professionals (and being one herself!), to stepping into more of a general marketing and small business leadership spotlight: first as a podcast host, then as the founder of the Alt Marketing School online learning academy. Now she’s taking it a step further as a fractional CMO.

Fab’s had several touch points over the years where she’s had to rebalance the boundaries and overlaps of her different positions: as a marketer, as a community leader, as an educator, and as her own vibrant self. Through it all, she’s forged a career all about helping people via stronger systems, more effective marketing, and, above all, a sense of fun!

Listen for:

• “Big Labrador energy”
• Fab’s start as a business and marketing coach for health and wellness entrepreneurs at Health Bloggers Community (later Creative Impact)
• Becoming known via community events
• “I was kind of hiding behind the company because it was more about community, about others…”
• Alt Marketing School Podcast
• “I'm going to say the P word: ‘pandemic’”
• Sharing her journey as a founder and learning in public
• Becoming the go-to for marketing business support  
• “Helping making marketing better for marketers”
• Working out the Fab, the person, and the personal brand, and the expert would play within Creative Impact? And how did you work out the differences and or similarities of how Fab, the person, would factor into Alt Marketing School? 
• “I'm clear about my mission I'm clear about what I want to do and I'm clear about what I enjoy doing within that as well”
• “The energy that I bring in is so essential to the school…I embody it by being an absolute doofhead.”
• Why systems are so essential
• Showing up
• The boundaries and overlaps between Fab and Alt Marketing School
• Becoming a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, and adding that to the mix
• The drive to help others
• What Fab truly delivers to people via Alt Marketing School
• How long ago were the 80s?
• Her husband’s fans

Find Fab:

LinkedIn

Instagram

fabgiovanetti.com

altmarketingschool.com 

Fab's Books!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When people in the know hear the word “community,” they think of Christina Garnett.

But Christina didn't always start out specifically working in community; her turning point in her personal branding journey was a specific tweet in December 2020:

"If you have less than a 1,000 followers and work in marketing in some capacity, introduce yourself to Marketing Twitter.

Say hi, tell us about yourself, and what you like to tweet about.

Make friends."

You'll hear us talk about that tweet a lot in this week’s episode, and how it wound up changing her life and impacting her professional career in great ways. We also discuss what she was doing leading up to the fateful tweet, what she did with it, and how she has weighed her options since–including starting her own business as a fractional CCO (Chief Community Officer/Chief Care Officer) and advisor, helping companies foster better communication with their communities in all sorts of ways. 

Listen and learn:

• Community as a response to COVID-era isolation
• The Tweet
• Why it hit
• Not overthinking it
• Continuing to keep it real
• Haters gonna hate
• Pre-Tweet career
• Pandemic 
• Medium article
• Burnout, vulnerability, reaching out and getting known
• Why people wanted her
• Being a connector
• Data driven strategy
• The voice of the community
• Parasocial relationships with brands, and how personal brands come into play with solidifying that relationship
• Deciding not to become an influencer
• Creating her own job title
• What drives Christina
• Why companies need community
• What Christina specifically brings to the table
• The personal and the professional

Find Christina:

Twitter

LinkedIn

Pre-order her book!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I first met today's guest, Jess Zafarris, as a journalist in the marketing and advertising space (she was an editor for Adweek and is now editor at large at Ragan Communications and PR Daily). 

But what we're really talking about today is Jess's other career–and other personal brand–as an etymologist and etymology author.

On her “Useless Etymology” channels, Jess presents word origins and history in an engaging and entertaining way, and is working on her third etymology book. We discuss how she concurrently built her careers as a journalist and a “pop etymologist” and how she’s balanced both.

Listen and learn:

• Jess’s career in journalism 
• Her Adweek chapter, and building a name for herself
• “How could you be so incurious?...”
• Why this topic interests me (Christine) so personally
• Jess’s research background
• ”It's kind of like linguistic anthropology–linguistic sociology, more so…”
• Useless Etymology blog
• Building TikTok accounts for both Adweek and Useless Etymology
• “Once Upon A Word”
• Jess’s brand voice
• “I didn't want to jeopardize the career that was affiliated with my primary income…”
• Growing Useless Etymology
• Content lessons
• “Words From Hell”
• The violent history of the word “decimate”
• “Offbeat word origins for curious minds…”
• Jess’s book development process
• “Useless Etymology: The Book”!
• “I actually let my audience choose for me…” 
• What lights Jess up about etymology
• “Have you ever tried to read the OED?”
• The positive opportunities “Words From Hell” has opened up
• Words Unraveled podcast
• The topic of Jess’s fourth book

Find Jess:

Blog

Podcast 

TikTok

Instagram

Useless Etymology Instagram

Books:

Words From Hell

Once Upon A Word

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s conversation is with a good friend of mine. Paul Ince, a.k.a. BizPaul, is the owner and founder of LikeMind Media, a content marketing agency in Loughborough, UK, as well as the founder of the MarketEd Live conference.

We talk about how Paul Ince, regular human, became Biz Paul, content marketing thought leader, back in the early days of social media. We also talk about being in touch with the things that light you up about what you do, and the challenges that can come along with expansion, especially if what your clients are really buying is you.

Finally, we get into my favorite thing about a personal brand: no matter what it is that you do, other people do it too, so what really makes you the right person for someone to work with? Because it's not about what you deliver. It's about what you personally bring to the table–and that, of course, is your personal brand.

A few of the things we hit in today’s episode:

• Working for a national technology company 
• How the 2008 Beijing Olympic games indirectly led to @bizpaul 
• Becoming a content creator in the tech space
• “I had no intention of setting up a business…”
• Trying to sell an app people weren’t ready for…
• …and deciding to focus on closing that knowledge gap instead
• Paul’s first cringey business card
• Paul’s first cringey pitch deck (it worked!)
• Not the footballer
• How events changed the game
• MarketEd Live
• Starting to take on help
• Balancing BizPaul and LikeMind Media
• “I don't really want to be known as the funky-shirted marketing guy…”
• What keeps him in the game
• What he truly delivers
• What makes someone a fit—or not a fit⏤or LikeMind Media
• What people are really buying into when it comes to BizPaul
• “Maybe it's a Gen X thing. I suspect it might be…”

Find Paul:

BizPaul.com

PaulInce.com

LikeMind.Media

LinkedIn

Instagram

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brooke Sellas of B Squared Media was on previously talking about the thing that she is known for: customer care. This time we’re digging into how she got known for it, what it really means to her, and her motivations behind it. 

This is an especially relatable conversation because despite owning a successful marketing agency, appearing on massive stages such as Social Media Marketing World and Inbound, co-hosting a few prominent podcasts, and writing a book on her topic of expertise, Brooke initially struggled to put herself out there in each of those situations. In all cases, it was a nudge from someone else who believed in her that helped Brooke get to those next levels of visibility and thought leadership. 

As you'll hear today, she is starting to take the reins a little bit more herself, and recognizing after all these years of all of this external validation showing that, yes, actually she is an expert, she does have something to say that people need to hear from her specifically, she's finally recognizing that these people may be onto something. She’s ready to start not just accepting these opportunities, but creating these opportunities and guiding where she wants her personal brand to go. 

I hope Brooke takes a listen to this episode and says, “Wow, I sound pretty smart.” (Because she does.)

Here’s some of what we get into in today’s conversation:

• How Brooke came to start B Squared Media
• How she got started in social media to begin with
• Expanding the agency beyond herself
• Her professional point of difference
• “Think Conversation, Not CampaignTM”
• Why customer conversations are so vital
• Stepping into her personal brand
• Getting on stages
• Co-hosting podcasts
• Writing her book, “Conversations That Connect”
• The future of Brooke’s personal brand
• Brooke’s true (professional) love
• The need Brooke truly solves for her clients
• The power of goofiness

Find Brooke:

LinkedIn

B Squared Media

Book:

Conversations That Connect: How to Connect, Converse, and Convert Through Social Media Listening and Social-Led Customer Care

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I first got to know Mario Marchese, aka Mario the Maker Magician, nearly a decade ago, he had already achieved some success as a children's birthday party magician (including performing for many NYC celebrities). Mario now has a full stage show, selling out theatres and festivals in NYC, London, Edinburgh, and Adelaide. He's won awards from the Magic Castle and has appeared on Sesame Street, Blue Peter, and The Tonight Show.

Here’s a bit of what we cover in today’s entertaining, inspiring conversation between friends:

• How Mario went from teaching elementary school, to performing as a weekend magician, to running his own business (alongside his brilliant, visionary wife, Katie Marchese);
• Learning how to bring more of his genuine self (and his personal style) to his shows;
• An overheard comment that changed his life; 
• Building his own show, quite literally;
• The celebrity moment that helped his dad finally understand;
• Shifting gears from living rooms to theatres (and learning how to fill them!);
• The four minutes of every show that make it all worthwhile;
• What it all means to Mario (and, hopefully, to his audiences);
• Why less is sometimes more.

Find Mario at:

https://www.mariothemagician.

https://www.instagram.com/mariothemagician 

Books:

The Maker Magician's Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Magic + Making

Robot Magic: Beginner Robotics for the Maker and Magician

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to “Let’s Talk About Brand”! 

My 2023 was a little bit hectic; I did manage to get some incredible episodes released in autumn 2023…and then I didn't pick it back up. But I’ve finally got my feet under me again. And I'm back with a brand new format—one that I’m debuting today with myself as guest!

On this season’s episodes, my guests will first lead us through their own personal brand development. Then, I’m going to take them through a few of the deeper questions I go through with my clients to get to the heart of their genuine personal brand: their motivations, the value they bring, all that good stuff.

Let's get to it.

• My career journey before I built my own personal brand
• Two life-changing things that happened when I became a full-time journalist
• How I leveraged my personal brand to launch a new career
• How Christine Gritmon Inc. has changed since May 2016
• 2020: amazing; 2021: awful; 2022: employed; 2023: laid off
• Re-embracing my personal brand in 2024
• Why I do what I do
• The deeper needs people who work with me have
• What I truly deliver
• Bringing more personal elements into your personal brand

I’m so excited to start the season. Let's go!

https://www.gritmon.com/ltab/s5e1cgritmon

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some brand journeys are worth taking a look at to see what we can take away from them to build our own brands. And no one is a better example of that than this week’s guest, Michael Stelzner.

He is the reason that many people have gotten into social media marketing as he is the ring leader behind all of the education that Social Media Examiner brings! However, his personal brand started well before he stepped into the social media industry.

In today’s episode, Mike is going to walk us through the development of his brand journey from being the white paper guy to the social media guy and into his newest mission. So many great lessons to be learned!

Tune in as we talk about: 

[00:00] Welcome Michael Stelzner

[04:28] How white papers launched Mike Stelzner's personal brand

[10:25] How did Mike pivot from being "The white paper guy" to social media?

[14:30] How did Mike build up his contacts in an industry he was relatively new to?

[16:45] How did Social Media Examiner Start?

[18:47] How did Mike move people from online content to an in-person conference?

[22:42] How does Mike balance three brands?

[25:37] How does Mike find up-and-coming industry voices?

[29:33] What should you do if you are asked to be on stage?

[30:25] What characteristic does Mike think makes someone successful?

[32:00] What is Mike's current mission?

[34:11] How to connect with Mike

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with my Prework Workbook here: https://www.gritmon.com/prework

Follow Christine Gritmon on Twitter: @cgritmon and join her each Tuesday for the #ChatAboutBrand Twitter chat.

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out every Monday to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week I’m excited to talk to fellow brand designer, Liz Mosley!

Liz was originally a stationary designer before recognizing her knack for branding creatives. We’re going to talk about how she first became an entrepreneur with her stationary business and how she ultimately transitioned into brand design. She’s going to share with us important considerations when branding for creatives because it is a bit different from other types of personal branding.

We are also going to talk about the evolution of Liz's own personal brand, and we’re going to get to the things that she has learned from her own podcast, Building Your Brand.

Tune in as we talk about: 

[00:00] Welcome Liz Mosley!

[02:26] How did Liz come to focus on branding?

[07:09] What has it been like for Liz to brand herself?

[09:06] How did you brand Liz Mosley Designs when it was a stationary company

[15:30] How it's different working with a fellow creative on the creative elements of their brand? 

[18:42] What are the elements that creatives need to have in their branding? 

[23:04] The story of Liz's brand transition

[27:30] How has Liz's podcast fit into her brand?

[31:20] Connect with Liz Mosley

Contact Liz Mosley

Podcast: Building Your Brand - https://www.lizmosley.net/podcast

Website: Liz Mosley Design - https://www.lizmosley.net/

Social Media at LizMMosley

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with my Prework Workbook here: https://www.gritmon.com/prework

Follow Christine Gritmon on Twitter: @cgritmon and join her each Tuesday for the #ChatAboutBrand Twitter chat.

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out every Monday to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While a personal brand is … well…personal. It isn’t something you should work on defining on your own.

But have you ever thought about working with personal brand coach? Do you wonder what it would be like? What would you talk about? What conclusions would you walk away with?

This episode is going to be a little bit different. In this episode, I’m going to give you a little taste of what I do with clients in my personal branding work. 

It's not like a whole session, but my brilliant podcast editor, Sarah Scott of Sarah Scott Studios, has said to me, “I think it might be interesting to see you do your thing on an episode.”

And so I've turned that right back around on her and said, “how about I do it with you?”

She of course agreed! 

So I'm very excited for today's conversation with Sarah about her personal brand. 

This is not nearly as thorough or as specific as I would do with an actual client, but I wanted to give you an episode that hopefully you could take some of this discussion back to yourself and use it to figure out some more of your own personal brand. 

If you want to take a look at the guide I gave Sarah before our session you can download it here: https://www.gritmon.com/prework

Tune in as we talk about: 

[00:03] Welcome! This episode will be a little different!

[01:31] Introducing the Guest: Sarah Scott

[02:49] Sarah's Journey from Healthcare Consulting to Podcast Management

[06:41] The Importance of Niching in Business

[09:41] How Your Experiences Can Lead to Building Your Personal Branding

[12:50] The Power of the Personal Brand Coaching Pre-Work

[14:21] Digging into Past Experience for Your Personal Brand 

[23:30] Blending Skills to Define Your Personal Brand

[29:00] Building a Personal Brand

[32:33] One way Christine built her brand

[33:14] Choosing a platform for your brand

[35:49] Benefits of Establishing Your Brand

[38:34] The Power of Networking to Build Your Brand

[47:30] Defining Your Brand: The Struggle of Self-Representation

[51:42] Generous Curiosity: The Key to Successful Branding

[58:26] Where to Find Me: Connecting with Sarah Scott

[59:18] Wrapping Up: The Journey of Personal Branding

If you are ready to start taking your personal brand seriously. Start by downloading my Personal Branding Worksheet at https://www.gritmon.com/prework

Contact Sarah Scott

Website: Sarah Scott Studios

Linkedin: Sarah Scott

Show Links

https://www.gritmon.com/ltab/lets-talk-about-personal-band-coaching-session-sarah-scott

Follow Christine Gritmon on Twitter: @cgritmon and join her each Tuesday for the #ChatAboutBrand Twitter chat.

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out every Monday to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.