The Stories That Build Your Brand | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: In this episode, Michelle Griffin and Matt Zaun talk about how to build a foundational personal brand that’s fused with your company.

MICHELLE GRIFFIN BIO: Michelle is an author, speaker, and coach who shows professionals how to step out and be seen as leaders in their space with her authority-focused approach.

For more info, check out Michelle here.

EPISODE MENTIONED: Stories on a Massive Stage with Rachel Simon

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzaun/

 

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors.

 

 

Matt Zaun 

One of the most horrifying things I'm hearing more and more is from the leaders that are trying to delegate their personal branding and sharing their personal stories.

To me, this is horrifying because they're missing out in a big, big, big way when they can be creating an incredible brand to really spur on a vibrant company culture to spur on more of a sales mentality, not only with themselves as a leader, but also with their sales reps.

So I'm excited for this episode because in this episode, I'm Michelle Griffin, the brand therapist. Michelle is an author, speaker and coach who shows professionals how to step out and be seen as leaders in their space with their authority focused

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

Welcome back, Michelle. Matt, it is wonderful to be here again.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

It is wild. It's been almost an entire year since our last episode. And I feel like so much has changed since we last spoke.

So I just, I have to start with this. You released a book, the LinkedIn branding book. And I was really excited to see that.

So I wanna learn a little bit about the backstory, what motivated you to do this. A little bit about maybe the late nights that went into like pulling this together.

I'm sure it wasn't the easiest thing you've ever done. I do a lot of writing myself and it's not easy to really pull together master for work.

And what you've done, you've put an incredible thing into the world.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

So talk to us a little bit about the book. Thank you, Matt. Yes, a lot has changed. One of the best things that ever happened last year for me professionally with my personal brand is getting the LinkedIn branding book out there.

I'll tell you that's always been a bucket list and, you know, we were. with the personal branding consulting work I do.

I kind of like to be the guinea pig and do everything. So my clients who actually want to write books and do podcasts and all that, they know that I've done it.

Like I've been there. So it was incredible because I saw a lot of people who were wanting to get on LinkedIn, who wanted to build their brands and also their company.

And I know that's why we're talking today, but they just didn't know how to put it all together. Or they just thought personal branding with some other fluffy thing, or they didn't see the real potential for them to do it.

So the LinkedIn brandy book was born and it has a framework, the brand squared system. It's all about building your personal brand together to exponentially grow you and your business, your career.

So the results have been really well received, very tremendous, and it just continues to get a lot of rave reviews and people are transformed by it.

So I personally was transformed by writing a book and I will tell you for anyone listening. who wants to do one is the writing is not the hardest part, Matt, as you know, it's clarifying and organizing your thoughts and a story based framework and also to give action and tips and results.

And I know that's probably a lot what you do in your workshops, but goodness. It can be a challenge, but you're right.

There were many nights that I stayed up well past midnight, but it was all worth it.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Awesome. So you mentioned two things I want to unpack. So you mentioned the word fluffy, right? I think sometimes that's the perception of what personal branding is to some people is fluffy, but then you also mentioned brand square system.

So you actually have a systematic approach to basically take someone and elevate them through a strategy with their personal branding.

So can you, for anyone that has that misconception of, oh, it's just this fluffy thing, could you talk more about your brand system that you've created?

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

Yeah, now I actually have my own brand system. myself personally, my consulting practice, but also for this book, it has its own unique grand squared foundation.

Before I get into that, I do want to address the fluffy part of personal branding. One of the things I'm always out there saying is, you know, you don't need a fluffy brand, you need a foundational brand, and I get it, people are scared of personal branding because they see it as, you know, a self-proclaimed, narcissistic way to just, it's all about me, me, me, look how great I am.

A lot of us are, you know, scared to be out there, scared to be perceived as promotional or all those things, and that is absolutely not what foundational personal branding is.

In fact, it's led me actually to my personal brand system. I actually call it the brand GPS. It's personal positioning.

It's positioning you for what's next. This isn't a one-off thing. We're not just going to build our brand to get a job.

We're building our brand to, you know, build our future, our careers, our businesses. It's not a one-off. It's a journey.

That's why I've renamed my seven step thing as a brand GBS, which I talked about in our last episode.

We're getting back to the book. Books need frameworks. If you want to lead someone along a path, they need the exact steps, right?

That's what I found. So the brand squared system first dives into your mindset. It is all about taking the mindset of what your fears, all the things that keep you from standing out in a bigger way.

We tackle that. It's called the first step is mindset. Now the second step is foundation. You've got to build your foundation to know who you are, what you want to be known for, have a point of view, have your story set so you're not just blindly getting out there.

So that's been tremendous because face it, a lot of people just get out there without the mindset to help them or the foundation to lift them up.

Now the third step is fusion. How do you build your foundation? How do you build your foundation? your personal brand and a fusion with your company, right?

And this can be on LinkedIn or in the real world, like, how are you building your brand as an executive, a leader of VP?

And, you know, how are you going to align it with your company? They work hand in hand in real life and on LinkedIn.

And the last phase is the multiplier. Once you're getting out, you're getting brand in your business in a bigger way.

So that is the four steps we lead through in the brand squared system. It's all based on the power of Tumat, the power of building your personal and your company brand for exponential results.

Now, again, this could be for LinkedIn and the brand book and for our conversation here for your audience, the listeners who might be a little apprehensive about building their brand.

But I'm here to tell them it's going to help them personally and also professionally. and for their business as well.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

So you, you, you, um, you froze right after fusion. So could you jump right into the fourth thing is the multiplier and start from there?

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

Oh, yeah. Let me, um, you're going to edit this out, right?

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yes. I just had a while you were doing that.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

I just had a, I can't believe this, but I had a complete roadblock on. Foundation fusion. Yeah. I had a, okay.

I was like, question myself.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Okay.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

So Matt, the four steps are mindset. First, you need to know why you were doing this.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

And you could just, you could just start with multiplier.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

If you want the fourth multiplier. Okay. Okay. The fourth one is multiplier. This is after you have, you know, aligned your brand, you need to look for ways to really propel yourself, your business.

So you're going to look for industry partnerships. You're going to build a community with your own professional network and also your business, your clients, your business, your business, your business.

stakeholders. You're going to look for ways to multiply yourself, not just on LinkedIn, but just why in your circles.

So doing all these four stages and the cohesive way we've outlined is really going to be tremendous in growing your personal and professional brand on LinkedIn and in real life.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

I love this. I absolutely love this. So there's so much to unpack with what you said. So let me give you an example and we can kind of work through this together just so everyone has more clarity regarding this.

So let's just pick a person that we're going to create at a thin air. This person's a CEO. So let's call this CEO Susan.

Okay. And Susan has a tremendous amount of empathy. Susan learned empathy from her grandmother. So Susan's grandmother struggled during the financial depression.

She basically because of that experience, this individual had an unbelievable amount of empathy. And now Susan takes that into her workplace as the leader and is cultivated almost

almost a community of individuals that have empathy. And it's really shown through to their clients as well. And it's made their clients adhered to them.

It's radically helped sales. So the mindset empathy foundation, it could really go back to that personal story of where she learned this, her grandmother.

But is the foundation also part of the system that Susan's building out? Is it part of like the social media foundation?

Or social media foundation and fusion is how we're getting that message out to the company through values? Is that how you would position that?

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

Well, from a personal perspective, foundation is basically setting like, you know, Susan is very empathetic. So it's going to set her brand story, her missions, her values.

I really dive deep into it in the book, you know, and outline all that. There's some misconceptions of what branding is.

In this foundation, we want to set your personal brand foundation, okay? And so Susan is going to lead with stories about how empathy has shaped her.

Her grandmother's story and it's shaped her as a. So that's how you do it. leader and it trickles down to her culture, her culture, her employees, her stakeholders, her massive clients.

So knowing your foundation of where you stand and where you're going to be out in the world is going to really help you pick your lane, so to speak, to get out there.

Fusion is bringing everything together. She's going to mesh her personal brand, Matt, with the company. And that's going to trick people in so many ways and lift everybody up because people want to work for empathetic leaders.

People want to be around and work and be hired by people who are going to help them be better in life.

So Susan's story of empathy as a leader is kind of her point of view and it's also helped her company and it's growing sales.

So Fusion is bringing her company into her personal brand and vice versa. They can work hand in hand back and forth.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah, I love that Fusion piece because I feel like a lot of leaders have a misconception, almost as like a detachment.

Like we have personal over here and we have business over here, which is kind of funny to me because like if, people that are running businesses, it's a big part of their life, right?

So it's, it's tough to separate the two. And I see a lot of leaders where they're, they're creating values based on their personal stories.

And they don't have that fusion piece. They don't recognize if they have certain values, different elements of what makes them them, they're having this disconnect between personal and business.

And they're not having that fusion.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

So I very much appreciate you mentioning that. Absolutely. Yeah. We're part of our, you know, we work in our jobs, eight hours a day on average, right?

So it's a big part of us. So it's okay. There shouldn't be separate entities.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Absolutely. No, I very much appreciate that. So for companies that have something in place as it adheres to values and their beliefs, and they may have, you know, vision, mission statements that then and maybe even some of their team members are somewhat on board with.

So they already have a little bit, how do they take that and really start creating this vibrant personal brand where people start coming to them?

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

They get out there. They don't keep it bottled up inside. They share, they're humanizing themselves. People, as you know, especially in the last three years, people are craving more connection, right?

So they get out, what you teach and preach and train on is sharing your story, a personal brand's story, and foundation, sharing what you're doing personally and with your company is going to tremendously compound interest and grow all that.

So you don't want to hide what you're doing, you know? You want to humanize it. You want to lead as problem solving and as humans.

And that trickles down to people wanting to work for you. People want to hire you. People want to promote you internally and externally.

So don't keep what you're doing bottled up. You should have a foundation, right, first, because I think that's what you're doing.

That's where people freak out. They're like, oh my goodness, I don't know what I'm doing. You know, and so that's what our book, this book in the brand secret system, it leads you on that path.

So you never have to worry. What am I going to say? How do I do it? And that's the biggest questions I get asked Matt, where to start?

I don't know what I'm doing. I'm scared.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah. And I really appreciate just the simple fact of getting out there, right? So touting those stories, touting the values that you have, really creating that person, a brand I just got done doing a podcast recording with Rachel Simon.

I'll actually include that in the show notes, but she gave this unbelievable stat where 81% of individuals, when they're looking at a company, should I join this company, they go and check out the CEOs social media accounts.

So thinking of leaders that they're bringing on really important pieces to the puzzle, different people onto their team, they're going to go check out what do they stand for, what do they believe in?

So you better believe the example that we gave Susan, people are gonna be looking at her social media accounts, trying to look for those stories, look at does she have any kind of a persona at all online and a lot of leaders don't, it's mind boggling to me.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

We need personas in this day and age. It is not where the CO sits in the white ivory tower and is untouchable.

People want that humanized version of executive leadership, right? Not only to work for, to do business with. So yeah, and it doesn't, now another thing Matt, people think, okay, I'm getting out there, I have to divulge and share my entire life.

And as you have taught me so well in the LinkedIn content, you put out sharing stories is not about, you know, dumping your personal life.

It's just sharing, inspiring educational stories in a business setting with an outcome to help other people. We all have those stories.

I know I'm preaching to the story strategist here, but that's when. Thank you. thing you have taught me in your content.

So I that's kind of what I lead with my, you know, workshops and training to your store. It's professional.

That's a word I coined to like two or three years ago. It's you being personable and professional, right? Not personal, personal, bold.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

There's a big difference. Yeah, I really liked that, that distinction you made. Also, I don't want people to be afraid to share personal stories with business themes intertwined.

I think we don't do that enough. Prime example, my eight year old son is literally obsessed with marketing videos on YouTube.

He follows some incredible content creators and my eight year old son has taught me different elements of marketing that I never thought of.

I mean, think of how quickly things are speeding up at a rapid pace and AI is going to accelerate that to the 10th degree.

I mean, think of thinking of taking what we have right now and continue to times it again and again and again.

So children are learning to market. strategy based on different elements of content that a lot of people don't recognize because there's so many new things coming out.

And how would I use a personal story like that? I've spoken to different companies that they think that marketing is just set like they're using old archaic marketing concepts that haven't really been done since the early 90s thinking that it's just set in stone and my eight-year-old son is teaching me elements of new marketing principles.

So like there's a way to take stories that happen in our day-to-day life and incorporate those business themes in our twant.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

No, that's exactly the way I approach in my own content and with the work I do with my clients because we can all relate to personal stuff, business personal.

So that's the prime way to do it and you know you may be a chat GPD chat GPT and if anything that is making you know advancing us so fast we need

personal branding to humanize us. We need to get out there and share our stories, share our point of view.

And as you say, there's a lot of outdated tactics. And so personal branding is a relatively new since about 1997.

But I think in the last three years is exploded in need and depth because the world's changing ever so fast.

And we must change with it so that we can continue to be relevant.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah, I really appreciate the relatability piece. So I want to dive into that a little bit because I feel like I appreciate you mentioning it.

I know what you mean. I've seen a ton of your content. So I understand that the levels of depth that you go into with this.

But I feel like a lot of people, again, the perception that fluffy word that you used, I feel like the perception relatability, it sounds very cliche to some people.

I think relatability also has some strategy with it. And what I mean by that is when a leader is identified, okay, this is our target market.

These are our prospects. Or this is our team. Right. So the, the, the makeup of the team is this.

The relatability comes out based on what the stories that we're sharing. So like as a, as a prime example, when I go in and I speak in different cities across the country, I'm very in tune with who is the main sports team that these individuals really support.

And if I'm using a sports analogy, I'm going to be very mindful of maybe different rivalries within that sports team or different elements of the culture surrounding that certain city.

Naturally important for me to recognize because the relatability, I'm not going to share a sports story that would be highly, not only it wouldn't be relatable, but also it might cause a little bit of friction.

So I think that's really important. The relatability, there could be intentionality and strategy surrounding the relatability.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

Would you agree? Absolutely. That same sports analogy can be brought, I think, which you're trying to get at and what I'm understanding in the same.

your industry. We all have our favorites. We all have the villains that are, you know, not so much people, they're just the things that are wrong with our industry that we want to rally against and, you know, the underdog wins.

So those all can be weaved into our current industry and be relatable and resonate. And it's not that we're trying to reach everyone, just that your stakeholders, your customers, your future talent, that's all exactly.

It's a strategy and when you do it right, you have those people coming to you, seeing you, knowing you and wanting to be around you.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Yeah, I really appreciate you mentioning people coming to you. And I want leaders that are listening to this, to recognize if you've had the challenge of quote unquote winning the talent war, what better way to position yourself as a leader by creating this personal brand with the values and beliefs that you have through personal story.

So people in the community that you have through personal story. So people in the community that you have through personal story.

you need to be part of your team. Wouldn't it be amazing if you had so many people that actively wanted to be a part of your mission and continue to expand it?

I think a lot of that has to do with the personal branding that Michelle's talking about. So Michelle, I appreciate you going through all this with us.

Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like I got a ton out of this conversation and I feel like there's actionable steps as well as their simplicity.

And I don't mean to belittle it. I think there's simplicity as far as like it's simple. People need to do it.

And there's more strategy that they can do after the fact, but they need to get the simple aspects in place first.

So what I'm going to take away from our conversation is three different things that I got the most out.

I really appreciate you mentioning foundational brand over fluffy. I think the perception that fluffy, no, it's actually a foundation that comes from a framework.

He mentioned the framework piece personal positioning. The second piece. is that fusion. I never really thought about the fusion piece before I really appreciate you mentioning that.

So you're having a personal brand, but it's the fusion with the company, with the company's mission and values and beliefs and everything that you're touting to your prospects as well as your team.

I really appreciate that fusion piece. And I also really appreciate you mentioning the relatability on taking different elements of stories that are relatable and really having it become part of your brand that really is gonna speak to an individual's prospects and their team members.

So thank you for your time. I very much appreciate it. If someone wants to get more information on you, what you do, what's the best place that they can go to get that information?

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

Thank you, Matt, and you summed that up so well. The best place is my website, Michelle B as in brand, griffin.com.

You can find the show notes, but I have one URL slash quick links that has everything you wanna know about me.

You can get links to the LinkedIn branding book, my LinkedIn community. Thank you. My resources, my two podcasts, I do a lot, Matt, because I'm here like you to share stories and just help people impact and position themselves the right way for growth for opportunities.

Because now is the time. Now is the time to get out there and start building and start resonating and relating to the people you're here to impact.

So thank you again for letting me be a guest on this amazing show.

 

Matt Zaun (mattzaun.com)

Absolutely. And thank you for your time. I will include that in the show notes. People can just click go right to your website.

I highly, highly recommend everyone checks out. Michelle's content, everything she's put in the world. We've been connecting now for about two years.

I've learned so much from Michelle on how to really take different elements of stories and position them from a personal branding perspective.

 

Michelle B. Griffin (Michelle Griffin)

So thank you so much, Michelle. I very much appreciate your time today. My pleasure, Matt. Thanks again.