Networking, Personal Brand and Reaching Out to the Unreachable: 5 Insights From my Talk at Employer Brand Leadership 2019

It's not about who you know, it's about who knows what you know

Two weeks ago I had the honor to give my talk "The Why and How Behind Building your Professional Brand and Creating Real Impact" at the "Employer Brand Leadership 2019" conference. The conference attracted hundreds of people and was held in collaboration with “TheMarker”, one of the leading news sites in Israel.

My speech was about what I learned and what impact did I see in my own journey of community and personal branding activities in the last five years.

Here are 5 insights I chose to share with the audience:

1. Networking: Let's start with the phrase shown in the picture. Unfortunately, many people are familiar with the sentence: "It's not what you know, it's who you know".

I'm sorry, but, this sentence is shallow, misleading and does great harm. It may have been true, somewhere in the past, today it is important to realize that it evolved to - "It's not about who you know, it's about who knows what you know". 

With way more emphasis on your professional knowledge, and the way more attention to the way you are perceived in your industry. Networking with depth.

2. No one will take care of your personal brand: Like always - if you don't take care of yourself - no one will. Strong brands and organisations have people who take care and nurture their brand. Who takes care of your own brand?

3. Hands-on. Always hands-on: Taking care of your personal brand require you to be very active and learn new skills. From content creation to community management, communication, marketing efforts and more. The more you try - the more you will know.

Just recently, I started learning video creation and editing. Watch this video I created for the Forum I led on my free time, “Tech and Innovation Forum” (Telegram, Hebrew), that helps me to share some tech related updates for my community:

The more you do, the more you know. The more you try, the more mistakes you do and learn from. The more mistakes you make (again, on your personal activities) - the greater experience and value you can bring to your organisation.

4. No "Stop! border in front of you!” sign: In the digital world, if you act right and add real and valuable content with the community - you can reach out to anyone. Anyone.

In my talk, I shared with the audience, how I reached out to former US president, Barack Obama’s senior assistant, how I interviewed Hilary Clinton’s senior innovation advisor when she was Secretary of State, as well as many more other who considered to be unapproachable. 

5. Your personal branding - leveraged back at you daily work: About six months ago I was asked by a delegation of student from Finland to announce about their visit in Israel on my "Tech and Innovation Forum" (Telegram, Hebrew). Their goal was to get familiar with the Israeli high-tech industry and hear the story of the Startup-Nation. 

I was happy to help. I also invited them to visit our Wix offices in Tel-Aviv. Now, here’s a question for you: can you guess which company took a significant part of the Startup-Nation story they experienced?.. 

Now, here’s a question for you: can you guess which company took a significant part of the Startup-Nation story they experienced?.. 

And, of course, stories always move on - I shared a photo with the audience, showing the students from that delegation in our offices, and then back at their university in Finland, where they shared what they heard and what they learned with the other students:

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I really hope you liked, this insights. Here are the slides from my talk, "The Why and How Behind Building your Professional Brand and Creating Real Impact":

Feel free to use the comments here to ask or feedback me back!