Mic Drop #10: 5 Personal Branding Mistakes Keeping You Invisible | Alex Shaw

In these ‘Mic Drops,’ I’ll be spotlighting my favourite, most impactful moments from past episodes of No Bollocks with Matt Haycox. These are the moments that hit hardest, offer the most value, and deserve to be heard again.

Most people are building a personal brand the wrong way, and they don't even know it.

In this Mic Drop, personal branding expert Alex Shaw breaks down the five mistakes that keep business owners invisible to the very audience they're trying to reach. From trying to be known for everything, to outsourcing your voice, to chasing viral views that never convert - Alex covers why 9 million views left him broke, and what he changed to make $23,000 from just 180,000 the following month.

If you're posting content and getting nothing back, this is probably why.

Chapters
0:00 - Intro
0:05 - Mistake #1
3:21 - Mistake #2
5:23 - Mistake #3
8:47 - Mistake #4
10:36 - Mistake #5

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Connect with Matt Haycox, No BS Business Podcast Host & 8-Figure Entrepreneur.

I’m Matt Haycox, entrepreneur, investor, and your straight-talking guide to building a business that actually works. I’ve raised over £750M, built (and rebuilt) 8-figure companies, and learned the hard way what it really takes to win.

On No Bollocks with Matt Haycox, I cut through the bollocks to bring you raw conversations with 7–8 figure founders, investors, and experts who’ve been there, done it, and got the scars to prove it. No hype, no theory, just actionable strategies you can use today to start, grow, and scale your business.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

I've got for you Claude's five top mistakes that people make. Number one, trying to be known for everything.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Yeah, I think that's definitely um It's obviously a very big problem because you're scattering yourself too wide and like you'd rather be known for solving a specific problem or for a specific set of beliefs. For example, like even if you are in fitness, you'd want your own unique mechanism of like how you approach it and it's all like based on your thing. So it's like if you say I'm a fitness coach or I'm a fitness coach who helps women lose 20 pounds during menopause, that person is gonna get a lot more people who are very hyper-specific targeting than the person who's just saying I help people get in shape. So it's a definitely a big problem because if you scatter yourself too wide, again, you're gonna get if you're a woman who's independent menopause wanted to lose 20 pounds, you're always gonna lose to the person who's hyper-specific.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

And also there's we're talking as well the the um specificity specificity side of being known for being a fitness coach. Not I'm a fitness coach in the day, I do SEO at night. Oh I've got that right.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Oh yeah, I've got a podcast studio and no fucked fox. Yeah, that's so if it's that case, I was even thinking like fitness coach who's not like specific. If you're just talking, I'm a fitness, I'm a fitness coach who also runs an e com brand. Yeah, and um give dating advice. If you talk on like dating, fitness coach, and um well there are some people nowadays though, like don't get me wrong, I um okay, this is interesting because I'm a firm believer that you are the niche. I don't think you should specifically niche down, like I only talk on fitness. I think if you were to only like say you're starting off and you do fitness content, dating content, and e-com content, and you're starting off absolutely horrid. But what I get my guys to do is like whatever goal they're trying to achieve. Say they're trying to, for example, myself is back in the day it was 50,000 followers, service level thing back in the day. Yeah, but everything I do in pursuit of that, whether it's content, whether it's fitness, whether it's business, if I'm starting a business, if I'm learning content, like all these things would be in pursuit of the goal, and I could speak on anything I wanted to, but put it in pursuit of this goal, that's how you like make yourself the niche. It's hard to do, for example, if you just specifically speak on fitness, then on dating, then on e-com. But like if you could think of a way where like it all attributes to say you're trying to build a generational amount of wealth and there's a figure tied to it because you want to help retire your parents and whatever else. So I'm helping as many people as possible with these three things. That's what people have to say for attention, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Yeah. If it wasn't for YouTube, there wouldn't the there wouldn't there wouldn't be all these people wanting to retire their parents until they really give a fuck about their parents.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Yeah, but like don't get me wrong, it's it's very hard, but the the the main thing I get people on is like you are not the niche you are in, you are the person you are. So if you have got other interests, you would still speak on them, but just make sure it's always pertaining towards one specific goal of your life, whatever it is at that time, so you can speak on a range of topics and always loop it back to this pursuit of what you're trying to achieve. And it allows you to then not be like, okay, I have to make a weight loss video today, I have to make a fitness video today, because you might be speaking on relationships, but then loop back back how to the relationship with yourself is just as important as a relationship because that's why you should focus on fitness and how you can manipulate the things you speak on in the pursuit of your goals is what allows you to expand them, then bring in other people to you. But just specifically speaking fitness dating e-com without that in mind, yeah, you're good, you're cooked.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Mistake number two: no plan, just posting.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

So see, that's very popular nowadays, though. Shit posting is probably my number one. So I say people fall into free content traps. It's either tactic tactics and tips only, lifestyle only, or shit posting. So lifestyle only would be like the traders, the people who just show the high, the the villas, the wins, the lifestyle, the the cars, the watches, the bitches, and they're like buy my trading signals and make money, whatever else, but they don't show the journey or the failures or where they started or where they got to. So they just show the wins and they expect people to trust them. But when they keep showing that, they come across as a guru, they come across as untrustworthy, they come across as a scammer. They could be the most trustworthy, like incredible, down-to-earth people as possible, but they only show a certain side to themselves, which is what doesn't build trust. But they could be incredible people, but the content they give off gives a bad perception of them, or like life's um tactics and tips only might be sales guys, just everything's objection handle, objection, objection, objection, objection. But there's nothing else past the objection. People might remember the objection handling, they might use that in the next video, but they'll forget the person because it's just always the same sort of stuff, and it's like you want to add more depth to it. The worst one of these three traps that I take tell people is shit posting, it's just no intent behind the videos, no reason why you're posting. You get an idea and you speak on it. You can get an idea and speak on it, but you should still have an intent on the video where you're gonna be able to do it in the direction.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Like I don't know, the traffic in Bali's fucking wild, blah blah blah. And that's and that's it.

SPEAKER_00 4:40

Bro, you're you're an e-con girl.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

How do you bring it back to e-con, for example? I mean, with 10 seconds effort, you can probably bring anything back to anything, exactly. Um, but put the 10 seconds of that.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

It's just with that conscious thought in mind. Of like why I say when you make yourself the niche, you don't want to limit yourself to just talk on ad spend and row ads because you'd be a pretty fucking boring person. Like, yeah, you get people in, but you want to be able to speak on a range of topics, but it always has to be with intent, or then how you can loop it back into serving your brand or what the goal of your brand is. But if you don't have that second intent in mind, and it's just posting for posting sake and getting a video out, whatever comes to mind, you will just shitpost and you'll build a scattered audience of just random people who are like, Oh, that's all called, that's cool, but you won't build an audience of buyers. You might grow a brand, but it'd be a pretty shitty brand.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Oh, mistake number three is one I can certainly relate to accidentally for me, and the the mistake is outsourcing the voice. Um and I remember so I was using a uh you want to call it a PR agency, PR lady, probably 10 or 12 years ago. Again, long before people thought about creating content posting content, and unbeknownst to me, they were making uh Instagram posts and LinkedIn posts, um, you know, with pictures and and words from me. I only even I didn't even know they were doing it until I had mates like taking the piss out of me, like messaging me these posts saying, like, what the fuck is that? Like, you know, you don't believe that or you don't think that. I'm like, what are you talking about? And I found out uh found out that they were doing these posts, and it wasn't that the let's say the underlying message was wrong, it was just that the tone and the delivery and the style couldn't have been any any any any any less me. One of the first things I would always say is that the clue with a personal brand is in the name, i.e., it is a personal brand. If you can't commit any time whatsoever to your personal brand, don't fucking bother doing it because you you've got to have your voice, your everything in there, otherwise it's uh you may as well just stick with the corporate brand because it's so impersonal.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

And this was probably the main reason why I stopped the first dumb for you agency, is because I would write for them and consciously try so so hard to write exactly how that person would speak it, but it is so hard to speak in someone's exact tonality. I would know there are certain phrases and certain ways of inflections, or if they are a low speaker or a high speaker or energetic or tame or timid, but it's just so so hard to write exactly how that person would do it because you aren't them. You can get as much information. I go for an intense onboarding to get as much as possible to do it for them, but it's just so so so hard to exactly 100% replicate someone, and that personal touch you say requires effort from them, requires a little touch. So, for example, I moved it from instead of it being 100% done for you, it'd be like 90%. So, like this is a skeleton, this is everything that I would want you to say, mention, flow, change at this point, this is the hook, everything else. But when you get this script, read it out how you would read it, not how I've written it. Because I've tried to write it how you would do it, but don't take a verbatim because I just cannot write how you would read it, and that was a lot of problems because then people wouldn't want to go over and do the reviews because like I'm busy with this, I've I've got whatever else, and it just had a lot of friction. And yeah, if if you completely outsource everything, like you will just again build a you're better off just building a corporate brand.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

What kind of quantity? Uh I mean, whether it was on the dumb for you or or uh now on the dumb with you, what kind of quantity of content are you advocating for people to post?

SPEAKER_00 8:03

I say minimum once once a week. What I'm trialing with a lot of guys right now is trial reels. There's a thing right now. I'm not gonna sit here and say I've got this secret source because I'm trialing it myself, but you can post up to five to ten trial reels a day, which is something that I'm getting my VA to do given her captions, text, and B reels, just alter between, it's all specific to try and find my audience. And I would post one normal reel that I do myself to the main feed and then one YouTube a week. If you can post if you're a business again, business owners, if they're busy, minimum five Instagram and one YouTube a week, I think you're fucking sound. Daily stories, five Instagram reels, seven at best. Well, seven if you can. The more the merrier, really. But just you don't want to sacrifice the quality of what you post, like talking on the barley traffic if you've just got an idea in mind.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Mistake number four, confusing visibility with authority. I mean, just to flesh it out. So people chasing virality, follow accounts, and viral hooks. So they get the reach, but they don't get the business.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

I did a story on this yesterday. There was a period where I got nine million views in a month, and I made on one particular thing or on the month. It was like three, four videos, did like a mil. Yeah. It was like a very good month view-wise, but I was still at the time it was what 14 months ago. I was still broke, like I didn't have a business. I was doing sales on the side, like I didn't make anything for my brand. But then there was a period like um last month where I got 180,000 and I made like $23,000 from that month. But my view count drastically fucking dropped. Yet the intention behind my videos was a lot more hyper-specific, trying to solve a problem and actually push people through this connection nurture conversion, and that's when people then bought from me. But if you just find a viral video online, like I can make that better, which I did, find us found a skit, I can make it funnier, go do it. Three million views, but it doesn't then translate to then buyers. I see a lot of people who build businesses like that, and like you will get people, you will get like you will get buyers from there, but the people you get through will not be anywhere near as warm because they've just got attention of you, they don't trust you yet. And if you just go for virality and chase those views and followers, but emptily, just from like funny skits or chasing virality videos, you're not gonna have that trust. And when you do get someone on a sales call, you probably still will get a few people through, but you'll be battling this person trying to drag them through the fucking screen because they don't actually know if they should trust you or like you. Whereas someone who's come through, watched your stuff for three, four months to get on a corner, it's more logical of like, okay, what's the price? How do we do this? Whatever else. Whereas a lot of people that come through cold from watching a viral video, but that's not all they've seen you. It's a lot, lot harder to go through that if you just chase reality. Because you might find you funny, but they don't trust you.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

And number five, going silent for long stretches, so posting intensively for six weeks, getting no immediate ROI, losing motivation, disappearing for four months, algorithm forgets you, starting all over.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

I mean, obviously it's it's like starting fresh again. Yeah. There was a period where I dropped um when I got to capacity with the done for you side, I stopped posting content as frequently myself, and I did kind of fall into the category myself of shit posting because I was just trying to get out anything I could, above the other ten guys I was writing their content for. And I believe the work you you'll know this, the work you do three to six months is what's going to come back in three to six months later. So I've noticed that the beforehand, the amount of people that are coming through consistently is way, way, way higher. Still things are good now, but way, way more higher after a consistent period of like eight to ten months. Whereas when I started this, um when I carried on the business, I had a period of like three months where it was like once or two times a week. Like I was doing my other guys' content, but I wasn't doing mine as frequently, and there was a little bit of a dip. It's coming on the back now because I've been consistent for a while. But if you kind of like you kind of lose that spot in Instagram, like there'd be times where I'd put out a pretty shit video and it would just get guaranteed like eight to nine thousand views because of how often I've been posted. Whereas now I'd put out a video which is five times better, more curated, and like more raw, everything of what I know to be a good video, but because I hadn't been consistent, it would just be at a lower range. You still get the same engagement, but just not be pushed out as much, still get the same metrics. But the consistency you do over time, Instagram will just keep ticking up and up and up. And you can't really gain the algorithm, but if you're just consistent long enough, you will just compound upwards.