5 Lessons from Ash Jones

Last week, I spoke with Great Influence Founder Ash Jones about the power of a personal brand and the importance of purpose when taking your next step.

These are 5 of my favourite takeaways from the episode:

1. Social media can be a tool for whatever we want it to be.

… and it would be remiss of us not to take advantage of that. Especially when it comes to creating our own opportunities for career development.

Personal branding plays a huge role in this.

By building one, you are controlling the narrative around yourself. You are telling people what you can do. You are showing people your potential. You are ensuring that you are making it out in front of the right people.

The truth of the matter is - you don’t have to build a personal brand. And you don’t have to take or chase the opportunities that come off the back of a good one. You’ll still find a job. You’ll still progress in your career. Your business will still grow. But you’ll never get to know just how much further you could have gone. Just how much more you could have achieved.

2. Personal branding has an unlimited number of benefits for your business.

• It makes hiring easier
• It makes onboarding easier
• It drives credible leads
• It drives internal positive PR
• It creates external PR opportunities

And these are just a handful. As people continue to push the boundaries of what a personal brand can encompass, more and more are being discovered.?

Ultimately, you are in control of the endpoint. Your personal brand will work as hard and for as long as you want it to.

3. Leaders need to trust their teams to tell the company’s story in their own way.

So many businesses are afraid to let their teams loose on social media. More often than not because they are afraid of losing people to head-hunters. But what people need to understand is that this is unavoidable.?

People are going to move on at one point or another, and by actively trying to hold people back out of fear that they will leave, then you are doing more to push them out of the door than you are to keep them inside it.

You are also missing a huge opportunity when it comes to promoting your own business. The biggest plus to having a team of people working in your business with their own personal brands is their ability to promote your company culture. As a founder, you could post forever about how great you are to work for, or how great your output is, but people see you as biased.

In reality, they get a much better feel for a company culture by listening to the team who are living it. Who can provide an insight into what it’s like to actually work there.

Even the fact that you have team members who are willing to go out publicly and shout about what you are doing is a huge green flag.

4. Personal branding is not about vanity.

It’s not about being the loudest or the flashiest.?

It’s about being the most authentic. It’s about getting to know your values, drivers and purpose, and using them to inform the way you present yourself online. Using them to inform the topics that you speak on, the opinions you develop, and the connections you foster.

5. Don’t jump into something unless you are certain of your purpose.

Everyone is desperate to jump to the next stage of their life. Whether that be founding a business, gaining a promotion, or simply buying a puppy, everyone wants to do it now.

In the podcast, however, Ash makes a strong argument for patience. He acknowledges the lifestyle change that comes with big decisions like these and that people regularly neglect to consider when taking the leap.

He urges people to take the time to pause and ask themselves why they are so keen to do that thing right now and to consider what would happen if they were to wait and really cement their purpose.

You can listen to the full episode here: https://bit.ly/3HLeHQZ