Introducing Yourself - Making That First Impression Count

I've spoken a lot about personal brands and there's a lot of stuff out there right now around it.

One of the key components about a personal brand is the proposition of who you are, how you serve and why that matters. I wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking about how you present yourself.

If you're asked the question,

'Hi, Nick, what do you do?' 

Or you're introducing yourself at a party or anything like that, that kind of social element of how you introduce yourself is pretty important and it's also the thing that can open many doors.

If you think about it, if you go into a room, a business meeting or whatever else, you go out to a dinner or a networking function, even the stuff that we're now doing so much on zoom as we're kind of locked down, that first thing that you say is absolutely critical. It's the thing that people remember. There's an old adage that first impressions count and I still believe that to be true. 

When you're thinking about how you do that? The first thing you've got to be clear on is your personal brand and what you stand for. I'm just gonna give you a few tips today just to think about this because a lot of people get confused, they get consumed, they're not quite sure where to start.

The starting point for me is you've got to think of your personal brand in terms of three components. It's 70% who you are. Who you are right now, it's what you stand for, what's your values, it's what you stand against, it's what people say about you when you're not there, it's all of those sorts of things. It's then 20% what you are becoming.

Now, people get confused by this because they're like, ‘hold on, I'm not that person now, so therefore it doesn't make sense.’ You've got to realise that we're all growing, we're all changing, is the process  called self actualisation.

And we're going to become something, whether we like it or not. Our environment is going to influence that, the people we hang out with are going to influence that. You're better off being intentional about what that is and that's what self actualisation really means. For me, that's 20% of who you're becoming is what you're stepping into over the next few years, as you grow and develop.

If you can own that now within your personal brand and ground that with who you are today, that creates quite a compelling mix in terms of how you communicate yourself and how you think about your messaging.

The last piece, the last 10% is what your ideal audience expects you to be. Now, that is again, being super clear on who you're trying to help, understanding what their real problem is, working out why your solution is better than anything else out there, particularly for thinking about this from a commercial perspective.

But quite honestly, it's really just about being clear. The clearer that you are in yourself, the clearer it will be for whoever you are trying to communicate with.

Just a couple of thoughts in terms of how you can do this. As I said, it's about asking questions like what's unique about me? 

What do I stand for?

What do I stand against?

What do people say about me when I'm not in the room?

What words or values could you own?

For example, I own Scale Up, I've been talking about scale up now for a number of years and people see me as being synonymous with that word. 

What is your mission? 

What are you really trying to create?

How do you solve people's problems, pains?

The last piece is really about creating a bit of a brand story. The way to think of that is, this is where I was, this is where I am now, this is the action that I took and this is how that can help you.

People like to talk in stories, people like to listen and they like to communicate in stories. The more that you can think about yourself in terms of a brand story, the better.

The way to do this a little bit is think about going into a room and someone says, 'Oh hi, here's Nick, what's he about?'

You may say something like, 'Yeah, alright, my name's Nick. I'm a business growth expert. I help investors and entrepreneurs build empires by growing, scaling and selling businesses'. That's pretty clear, people won't argue too much with that. It's maybe not very exciting, but it is what it is.

Then you want to kind of hit them with something which grabs a bit of authority. I might say something like ‘Over the last decade I've been involved in 24 business exits with a combined valuation of $5.2 billion. I'm also the host of the world's number one podcast on business scale-up, which is called Scale Up Your Business. We now have over 250,000 downloads in 130 countries worldwide.’

Bringing that element in just creates a bit more authority. Then, the thing I like to finish with is what exactly is your mission or what are you working on now?

‘Right now, I'm working on a book. It's called Build Your Empire, and it's going to be launched in the next few months.’ Again, it's just a point of interest, but I'll give you one caveat.

It's important to introduce yourself well, it's important to be able to have that social element. But the most important thing to do is to listen.

Listen, listen, listen.

The whole thing about two ears, one mouth, and introduce yourself when the time is right. There's nothing worse than someone talking about themselves all the time in those situations. It's not interesting and it also shows a lack of awareness in many cases

The most powerful thing you can do if you want to influence, is listen, listen, listen and then when you have the opportunity to present what you do, to introduce yourself, I guarantee, that will be like a mic drop moment.

People will be so attentive because you haven't tried to be the loudest voice in the room or the loudest voice on zoom.

There you go, just a couple of my thoughts about the importance of personal brand, how you introduce yourself. Maybe go away now, take some of those tactics, think about what your current process is, what your current pitch is, and then see if you can improve it based on those things.

Nick Bradley

Scale Up Your Business

www.suyb.global