How Founders Can Leverage Personal Branding

Aamir Hussain: 0:00

It's not that oh, you know, I'm a founder of this and that that you can read on LinkedIn. That's not really personal branding. Personal branding is actually showcasing your perspective on things, your opinion on things, your likes and dislikes.

‍Anshika Arora: 0:17

Today we're going to be talking all about personal branding. We're going to discuss exactly what personal branding means. How authentic should you really be when you're building your brand? Is there such a thing as oversharing? And also, how does it directly link, if so, to your commercial success of your business? We're lucky enough to be joined by Aamir Hussain, who's the founder of his own content creation agency, a research consultant and, most importantly, the visual content lead here at the BAE HQ. So if you've attended any of the events, you would have definitely seen him.

Anshika Arora: 0:48

My name is Anshika and I'm the founder of Eternity, where our CRM software designs specifically for wedding pros and newly engaged couples, and I'm so excited to be hosting the podcast here on behalf of the BAE HQ, powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So thanks, Aamir, for coming on today. It's great to have you as we talk about all things personal branding. I'm sure you would agree, and many people here would agree, that you're quite the expert when it comes to the topic, so we're very excited to have you on board, and I know I'll especially be learning a lot from this session. So I guess one of the first questions that comes to mind is relevant for founders at all stages, but more so, let's say, those who are starting out in their journey, is what does personal branding really refer to? What does that mean?

Aamir Hussain: 1:32

So I think there are many different definitions, depending on what type of founder you are, what you define personal branding in your remit, but the general overview is you're showcasing who you are in different facets to an audience, right? So if you look at it from a company perspective, that company branding is showcasing the product, showcasing where it came from, or showcasing the service, showcasing what it is. Why is it beneficial? Why should you use it? And the same with kind of personal branding is you're showcasing who you are. And the key thing is it says personal branding it's not that oh, you know I'm a founder of this and that that you can read on LinkedIn. That's not really personal branding.

Aamir Hussain: 2:15

Personal branding is that's showcasing your perspective on things, your opinion on things, your likes and dislikes. You know, for example, I like pizza. That's personal, right? You're getting to know who I am, uh, so the more, the more simplified you make it, the more actually personal it becomes, because it's not forced, it's not, um, you know, artificial, right? So when we go into some of the questions I'm sure you might ask, is showcasing the side of you potentially that you would in the first few phases of talking to somebody, if you're looking to be in a relationship or dating someone. Some of the first things you say is technically personal branding, if you're looking at that perspective, right.

Aamir Hussain: 2:58

So then if you look at, you know whether you're in a relationship, you're married, whatever you look at the first few, not the later ones, the first few ones you then understand that you are actually showcasing, you're doing personal branding in an activity with the other person, and the idea is that a lot of founders, operators or even content creators are showcasing that aspect to a bigger audience.

Aamir Hussain: 3:19

That's essentially personal branding from my perspective.

Anshika Arora: 3:23

So that's a really good description of it and I want to get into how it complements business branding in a second, because I know you've just touched upon that, but do you mind giving a quick snippet of, if anyone who's watching, why is personal branding even important? So we've understood what it is, but why should we be doing it?

Aamir Hussain: 3:40

So one of the biggest things now is you are competing with far more people, generally speaking, in the business sense, in a competitive sense, even from a, let's say, you're looking from a job prospect. Right, think of personal branding as a living embodiment of your CV or resume. Right, and if you look at it from that perspective, the reason why you do need personal branding is how do you set yourself apart from the other person? So, as a founder, as an operator, as an employee, as a person, as a human being, if you want to go to that extent, how do you separate yourself? Now, especially in the age of social media and content, you now have the opportunity to showcase more signs of yourself than you ever did, maybe 10 or 20 years ago. Right, cause the, the, the.

Aamir Hussain: 4:26

The barrier to entry to showcase yourself is obviously very tiny compared to what it was before. Right, to make a video before was like a full on film production. Now you can have a phone. I'm sure even probably watches do it now. So the barrier to entry is a lot lower. So then you need to differentiate yourself from the masters or competition or another company, right?

Aamir Hussain: 4:47

So if you look at it from even an employee perspective, if you're not going for a job and stuff like that, and you have your LinkedIn profile, your CV, whatever personal branding can also embodiment what you have put on that LinkedIn profile, what you put on that Instagram page, because some companies will look at that Not all, but some companies, depending on the job you're going for and then if you're going into that operators and founders same thing applies, right, you're going to an event and people say, hey, yeah, I saw you went to that event last week and you ate, like and used the same pizza analogy that's personal branding. People are. That's personal branding. People are starting to learn more about who you are. Yeah, they get the company. The company has its own marketing plan and branding, but they've started to buy into you and one common theme that we'll address later on is that people buy into you in terms of your personality. The more you showcase your personality, the more they feel closer to you and the more they trust you.

Aamir Hussain: 5:41

That's how powerful personal branding can be.

Anshika Arora: 5:42

I guess it's so interesting you've touched upon that because it does you're unintentionally building a rapport with someone you haven't even met yet, which is quite a tricky skill to do, but where we live in a world where everyone says you are your network, it's really important because I think you already then have that understanding of, okay, what kind of an individual is this and, like you said, they love pizza. It's a talking point which is great, amazing, and I guess because you've briefly touched on business branding, a question that I always have, and I know that founders and I always talk about is should your personal branding and your business branding be complementary, work in parallel, work in sync with each other, or should they be kept apart? We'd love to hear kind of views in your experience as well.

Aamir Hussain: 6:27

So in my experience I've seen both work.

Aamir Hussain: 6:30

So when your person branding has no affiliation to your business and it works because you're building, as you said, your network, is your network. So person branding can be another arm from a business branding perspective, which is great. You know people buy into you, they really like the founder, they really trust them out. Oh, they've got this company. Great, that also works. But from another perspective, if your personal branding is about you playing golf and your business is about VC, equity or capital or something like that, they're not mutually exclusive. But even at that point people still say, okay, this guy is a real, this person's a really human being, he does general stuff. Okay, he might be what they call either legit, it might be okay, clearly trustworthy.

Aamir Hussain: 7:16

So it doesn't have to affiliate to your business. Sometimes it works in your favor. When it's not, because it's kind of, you don't have to be mutually exclusive in a way. So my, if I, if you were to choose, let's say, for example, let's say, found this thing from me, what should I do? If you feel very natural, or you're a person branding to be affiliated with your business somewhat, shape or form, it is an asset right now, again, it doesn't have all your stuff doesn't have to be a value, because then it becomes artificial, because you're trying to force it, you know, putting it in somebody's face that all this you know my business company right behind me.

Aamir Hussain: 7:51

But generally, if you can document more about your personality, more about who you are, likes and dislikes, people, as you said, talk to trust, you build that rapport and if there's subtle things that naturally occur that are in relation to your business, for example, a classic way to show this in an example is behind the scenes.

Aamir Hussain: 8:11

You as a company might show the marketing plan about the origin story of where the service or product came from, but the behind the scenes can be your personal branding aspect, right when you as founder are talking about it and again, you're not lying because it is behind the scenes about something like that. And then you've got to remember your personal branding, or also your emotions, your feelings. If you say on your LinkedIn video profile that something you don't know about me is that I actually really struggled with you saw the company picture which is me smiling and winning an award, but I was crying the day before because of this or that. That's you being authentic, that's you being yourself, and say that, look, I'm being real with you, I'm being honest with you, I'm being you know, genuinely. This is how I felt and that's also showcasing you as a person, right. So I think they they don't have to affiliate to your business. If it doesn't, it's also good for you as a person, because the personal branding doesn't have to be affiliate to the company.

Aamir Hussain: 9:12

But I do think in this day and age now, it is an asset to have that.

Anshika Arora: 9:16

That's really helpful to know because I think, especially for me and where you've mentioned there that you could be having a really good day one day but the day before you would have been crying. It's really interesting because it's that fine line between actually, in your personal branding, how authentic do you want to be? Because there's benefit to being authentic. But I know as a founder I'm, for example, thinking, okay, my investors are watching, my clients are watching. Then it's about understanding and I guess it'd be interesting to hear your views. But is there a, is there a one solution fits all, or is it very personal to try and understand how authentic you want to be in your personal branding?

Aamir Hussain: 9:53

I think, if you're, every person is different in terms of what they can tolerate, in terms of what they feel is acceptable to share, what they feel comfortable to share, and that's your kind of own journey. But irrespective of what that threshold is for you as a person, what you can't do is to sit on the sidelines and wonder what, if right. There's different between what is and what if right. You will only know that threshold if you trial and error right. In an aspect of you, can speak to your fellow colleagues, fellow founders, say look, I was thinking about sharing this and this. What are your thoughts? Then you learn and you iterate along. Now it's a very good point you mentioned regarding oh, what if my investors see this? One argument could be that, if my investors see this, one argument could be that if your investors see that you're being authentic and it's a problem, that's a reflection on them, not you, because what is the issue about you being authentic? You can look at, you can share the numbers. Say, look, based on my kind of personal branding, it actually showed more authenticity to the company. Numbers are still great. You know all of that. You know founder number talk, which obviously I'm not very familiar with is that you know there's no issues with the metrics that you are very obviously focused on. So why is me being on something a problem to you?

Aamir Hussain: 11:04

It's a question you're going to ask a lot of people, right, and I think it's your own personal journey.

Aamir Hussain: 11:10

It looks like a personal branding, but what you can't do is just sit on the sidelines and say but if I say this, somebody might say this and then he might say that and then she might talk about this. You'll never post anything in your life, right same with your company you will. You will never post anything about yourself if you focus on what other people may or may not say. And it's this classic kind of spotlight kind of analogy a lot of people use where you feel it in the spotlight, but actually 99% of people don't care. They really don't, like you know. So that also is very important when you're looking at how to build your own personal brand.

Aamir Hussain: 11:49

And again we go back to the other question before that, your personal brand. You might be in the VC or equity space, but you might really love food you can tell I'm quite hungry in this podcast but you can tell that you are into a hobby or an interest. That can be your personal branding, that you're documenting something very different but you're being true to yourself is what I'm trying to get at with personal branding, whether it's related to your business or not.

Aamir Hussain: 12:17

As long as you're being true to yourself, people will buy into you.

Anshika Arora: 12:19

To your point, people buy into people, right, very true, um.

Aamir Hussain: 12:20

Very true. And even with a company, people buy into the founder or the person who's a figurehead of the business, right? Um, and that's more important now than ever before.

Anshika Arora: 12:29

Especially in early stages. It's what we're hearing more and more of is you should be showcasing your journey, and I guess that building in public that's where it comes from.

Amardeep Parmar: 12:39

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Anshika Arora: 13:16

You spoke briefly about the metrics and I want to touch on that a bit more because it'd be interesting to understand if we believe there is correlation between personal branding with the metrics.

Anshika Arora: 13:28

So do you think there is that direct or even indirect correlation with key metrics like traffic on your website or revenue or whichever metrics are most useful in the business? It would be really interesting to understand because, naturally, the the time that we spend on personal branding is time that we could spend on business branding or business strategy or business sales. And, like they say, time is money and so can we quantify it. Do you think?

Aamir Hussain: 13:54

Oh, a really good question, I think it's. If you're looking like, you know, if you spend an hour on personal branding, you could spend an hour on helping other aspects of the company. So what I would try and advocate is that, although this is not, this is not for everybody, so what I'm about to say might be slightly controversial, but I do feel a lot of your personal branding is done in your own time, away from the company's time. That makes sense right now. Again, as operators, there isn't a 95, right, you're working all the time. I get that, but generally most kind of most part of the day is dedicated to running the company, running the business, and so far that's fine. A lot of personal branding is done in your own time, evening, weekends, whenever you're free. So I don't consider personal branding eating away at a company's time or operating time generally, and that's when I feel a lot of personal branding should be done.

Aamir Hussain: 14:51

Before you start checking your emails, you could start making a post about something, and when you're working with with your, you know the rest of your team and stuff like that. Think of a lot of your. Let's say, for example, you've got a new service being launched, right, let's. Let's look at it from a from a, a actual working example. Let's say, right, you've got a new service being launched and, from the company perspective, you need to document, maybe, the content behind what you're going to share, why this new launch is really important. You're going to share it on linkedin, on your website, you're going to run an ad on facebook, for example. That's you doing company work. Let's say it's not for or not difficult to say that within that time, if you had your iphone out and you were documenting deciding that, did you really take out too much time to do that? Probably not. And it's being smart about how you can document the journey, right. If somebody who's part of your team is just took a photo, that's it. It took what? Three seconds to take a photo.

Aamir Hussain: 15:51

And and then, whenever you are struggling because you're here at Rancidblog and you share a LinkedIn post about getting the life of me working as a founder, I decided that you know what I want to do this, something related to yourself that didn't take up too much time, right? So I think you can be quite smart with your time to reduce the smart with your time to reduce the toss, switching between you know you as a company as a founder and then you as a person trying to build a business, you can be quite savvy and smart with it. I do respect that. You know you could have spent more time talking to an investor, more time building this ad campaign. I get that.

Aamir Hussain: 16:31

But you have to look at it from a long-term strategic perspective. You maybe reduce your work for maybe an hour or a couple of hours in a week, for example, but the long-term is your network will 10x in a couple of years because of people now know who you are, because of the personal branding and the personality that you've now been able to share. So it's kind of the short-term versus long-term strategy same within the founder's perspective, right, the same thing applies. Think of, think of personal branding as an asset for your company.

Aamir Hussain: 17:03

Think about that.

Anshika Arora: 17:04

Yeah, and I love that because I guess what you've, what you said there is, be savvy with it and, as founders, efficiency is one of our key skill sets that everyone's born with, um, but yeah, I think that was a really good point and really a valuable lesson for us to learn from it.

Anshika Arora: 17:21

But also the element around look at personal branding to have kind of a compounding effect, like you're not going to see results overnight but, like he said, the long term, doing that one percent a day, it will compound into, like he said, a 10x network amazing, I guess. On that point as well, it would be interesting to hear from you around at what point do you think a founder should focus on their personal branding? Because, naturally, if you're a startup founder, you're, you may be solo, you may not have a co-founder, may not have a team, maybe you have less time to spend. I appreciate your point around do it outside of, maybe, your work hours, if you do have any. But is it ever too soon to start personal branding? Should it be something that someone's doing, maybe even in ideation stage, or is it beneficial once you maybe have a bit more meat to the bones? What were your thoughts there?

Aamir Hussain: 18:09

So there's a few ways to look at this. So imagine I give you an example and you tell me what you think right, and this will give you an answer regarding this. So everybody knows Amazon, everybody knows Jeff Bezos, right? Imagine he documented his journey when he was in that very famous photo with the Amazon sign on the side. Imagine he focused on person branding and documenting the journey. Imagine how powerful that would be now showing the inside ups and downs to create, obviously, one of the most unique companies in the world in terms of, obviously, how big amazon is yeah most founders would look and then would love to see the juice behind how he developed himself.

Aamir Hussain: 18:47

So in that perspective, earlier the better and in right. So then you're looking at okay, let's say, you've asked, what about the ideation stage? Now everybody will look crazy. Until the company is successful, then everyone thinks that that person's a genius for personal branding at right, at the start. So you might look like let's say, you might look like an idiot about showcasing your journey from the ideation stage and you might be looked like what are you doing, like who are you, what is this company? But then when it develops into something like gym chart, for example, and you saw this person in his bedroom filling up parcels and then showcasing you know what. This is how I started you're showing who you are as a founder early on. That's incredibly powerful because then people buy into you even more because they've seen more and more of the journey from the origin stage. So if we look at it from that perspective, it sounds like the earlier you do it, the better. However, you made a valid point that in the early stages your focus is trying to get the company up and running, trying to start to build revenue and stuff like that, and I think you also.

Aamir Hussain: 19:57

It's kind of like a duality perspective. You have to look at it as part of the company and not part of the company at the same time. So, for example, as a founder, your whole life will be around the company. Of course it's all day, every day, twice on Sunday, that type of thing. I get that Exactly. But you will have moments where you won't switch off but you will be doing something else. And if you're able to look at it as I want to just document my journey for myself, see how I progress, see how I talk, see how I improve all of that stuff, that's also a kind of person branding that can be done in in different aspects, right. So I think that's going to be something that a person can do at the ideation stage, somebody can do when they may not have a team or stuff like that.

Aamir Hussain: 20:51

You, if this is a priority for you, you will make time. Everybody knows this, right, anything that if you think of it as a priority, let's make time. Then if you look at it as okay, not right now, not, what does it cost me now? One of the best calculations people talk about is trying to calculate the future cost of your current decision. It's very powerful metric to try and understand so you can then look at calculating the future cost of you documenting your journey now. Actually, it's actually not that bad, because it could be such an incredible story to tell to say so.

Aamir Hussain: 21:25

You might be looking at me now with having X amount of revenue a month, but here's this photo of me in my bedroom wondering should I give this company up? Not knowing about what LTV is or, you know, return on ad spend and stuff like this. That's showcasing who I am. And again, here's me eating pizza or selling my first sale or something like that. That's also showcasing who you are. So I do feel that, if you feel this is a priority, you know what your assets are and priorities are. Right now it might be. Do you know what we need to build this app? I don't really have much time to document it. Fair enough, but there will be elements where you can document the product. You don't have to document everything, right, you don't have to have a camera on you, on yourself, all day, every day, but just moments.

Aamir Hussain: 22:16

They have to be photos, and I think that is really, really important, and so I do feel people can have that um in their life.

Anshika Arora: 22:19

To your point around um showcasing, document the journey. It doesn't take long. How much of personal branding should be done in real time versus how much do you think should be reflective upon learning? So someone like a Jeff Bezos, like you said when he was making some mistakes with Amazon in real time, do you think they were more powerful to share as mistakes or share as mistakes with learnings?

Aamir Hussain: 22:40

So it all depends on the time that you have available. If you have time to document in real time, just look and just sit down and say, if I was to share this now and I was to share this now and I was to share this later, is there much change in the lesson learned? Not really, no. And if it isn't, then you might have more time to share it later in your own time, as opposed to trying to prioritize it one piece of content over something that is probably more important in your company, right? So I think, assess that. Does the lesson change if you share a real time or later?

Aamir Hussain: 23:11

And once you know that, you know what to do.

Anshika Arora: 23:13

Fine, okay, amazing and I guess, moving on ever so slightly. Um, a question that we hear a lot is business branding. We're all used to having content pillars, having a strategy and having a call to action in every and any messaging you're putting across. What are your thoughts on that for personal branding? Do they need pillars, call to actions, or should they really just be authentic and and kind of naturally getting the messaging across?

Aamir Hussain: 23:40

I think there's. There's no harm and you'll be naive not to have some sort of benefit to your personal branding. In a way, again, you can be the one who is truly a you know authenticity guru and don't want to share anything, just use documenting. Fair enough. But again, going back to what we said before, if you're keen to have it relate to your business organically, then yeah, you know, you can have it subtly, have some ctas towards something of importance. You know you might be showing the behind the scenes.

Aamir Hussain: 24:07

So I think naturally those content pillars form themselves because it's you. You already know what you like and dislike, what you want to talk about, what you want to build and showcase who you are. So they naturally evolve. You might want to note them down, that's fine, but then it's up to you how either rigid or how organic or how sporadic you want to showcase that side of you in terms of presence and branding element. So I think it's more up to you. Time is a factor, what you're comfortable with is a factor. But I do think that it would be naive not to have some sort of culture action, not to make your person branding beneficial, but to make it also useful to the audience longer makes sense.

Anshika Arora: 24:46

Thank you for that. And I guess our last question, before we get on to kind of who, um, who you think are some practitioners that are doing incredible work, and I'll quickfire around, but our last question would be what is one tip that you would stay in one quick line to stay authentic with your personal branding?

Aamir Hussain: 25:04

Document, don't create. So this is, um, this is statement from Gary vaynerchuk. Maybe people or the younger audience might be familiar with Alex homozy, very famous in the content world, but before him and the guys, he's still a parent, he's still, you know, present is gary v, and he mentioned this where, if you're documenting, it could be that's you being the most authentic self, because if you create, you're trying to maybe change things.

Anshika Arora: 25:27

Document, don't create, definitely a useful one for me and all of the other founders listening. Thank you, Aamir, for your time so far. We'd love to do some quick, quick fire questions with you, so this gets asked at the end of every single bait podcast. You may have heard Amar say them before, but essentially, who are three Asians in Britain who you believe are doing incredible work that the audience should check out?

Aamir Hussain: 25:57

So one very important for me is Ali Abdaal. Many people know him from obviously being a medic, a YouTuber, an entrepreneur and a lot of the value, and his journey has been very inspirational for a lot of people, not just Asians, in terms of those who've become content creators, who've created creative print and businesses. He's been very influential in my journey as a content creator, also what I do now in terms of helping clients. So, yeah, he's a big person in that space. Number two would be Navjot Sawhney, so the person who founded the washing machine project.

Aamir Hussain: 26:28

I had the great pleasure of chatting with him and showcasing how a person with, you know, incredible engineering expertise, creating a product that's actually changed the world, has people all around and it's just a great altruistic mission objective, and how he's helped people in the UK in terms of people joining the project, how he documented the journey. Again, his personal branding has been incredible. He's showcasing careers. He's a person I have a lot of respect for and such a great guy. So I'm very, you know, amazed about what he's done.

Aamir Hussain: 27:13

And, lastly, is Amardeep from THE BAE HQ, because for me personally, he's changed my life a lot in terms not just bringing me on board, but what he's taught me in terms of what I do now is a massive respect. So I don't know if you don't know if he's gonna, if he's gonna watch this, but it doesn't matter, because he's been a great role model for me. He's helped me a lot. He's changed my life as well and he deserves what he's done for the BAE HQ. What he's done in general is huge and he deserves all the praises that he gets.

Anshika Arora: 27:41

Absolutely love that. Well, Aamir, how can our audience find out more about you and your company?

Aamir Hussain: 27:46

So if you go on instagram aamir. phd. Um, you know you can document my journey of what I do outside of helping other clients. Um, that's where you probably see me documenting my journey as a content creator, um, outside of what I do with other people. So, yeah, you want to find out what I do go gym, play tennis, eat coffee, eat burgers.

Anshika Arora: 28:11

Amazing and obviously the BAE HQ is growing exponentially day by day. Is there anything that our audience can do to help you out?

Aamir Hussain: 28:19

Yeah, um, we've got tons of content, tons of podcast episodes. Watch them, share it, talk about us. I think um amity mentioned this is about what you do outside of the room, so talk about this when you're not in the room. So if you're in an event, great, but if you're not there, share our words, because the more people know about the BHQ, the more we can help, right? So, yeah, that would be the big thing.

Anshika Arora: 28:41

Amazing. Any final words from yourself?

Aamir Hussain: 28:44

Something I wrote in my PhD thesis that I try and share whenever I can is we all have a potential that far exceeds what our minds can imagine. What we lack is the belief that we have it and the desire to utilize it. You can't tap into a potential if you don't believe you have it. That's something I try and remind myself every day, and hopefully, all of you.

Anshika Arora: 29:03

Love that.

Anshika Arora: 29:03

You need to tell Amar to get that made on a shirt and sell it with the yes, I think we all use that as a daily reminder.

Aamir Hussain: 29:10

That's a great show. That's a great show, amazing.

Anshika Arora: 29:12

Thank you so much for your time today, Aamir.

Aamir Hussain: 29:14

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me. We enjoyed it.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:18

Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe no-transcript.

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