Using the Magic of Visual Storytelling to Build Your Personal Brand

When it comes to personal branding the pictures you use to tell your story make all the difference in the world. Meet John Demato, a branding, event, and book photographer, as he uncovers the magic behind visual storytelling. Our conversation with John reveals how intentional and compelling images not only validate your personal brand story but can also transform how you perceive yourself.

We discuss how the right pictures helps authors, keynote speakers and ambitious executives tell their story and take their career to the next level.

John's insights will guide you through the nuances of enhancing your business communication with strategic use of visuals.  Learn how to harness the power of imagery in your professional journey.

Check out John Demato's web site for more on this topic.

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Transcript

Eric Eden 0:02

Today we have a very exciting topic it's how to deliver magic through visual storytelling and we have the perfect guest to help us talk through it John D'Amato. Welcome to the show.

John Demato 0:13

Thanks for having me, Eric. I'm excited to talk about pictures with you.

Eric Eden 0:18

Well, personal branding is a huge topic on the show, and being able to tell a good visual story, along with describe who you are and what you do, is really important. So let's start out by you telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

John Demato 0:35

Sure. So I am a branding, event and book photographer who specifically serves experts who speak on stages. They write books, consult, coach, train, and my goal is to help them create a portfolio of images that showcase who they are, who they serve, the problems they solve and how they solve those problems. And, more importantly, what those photos are meant to do is to prove what they say about themselves is true by how they show up in these photos.

Eric Eden 1:13

That's awesome. I have seen so many people struggle just to get a good LinkedIn profile photo in a lot of cases, let alone other photos that really highlight the best moments of their career and their achievements. So I actually think this is a important topic because people need to do the storytelling visually, in addition to just writing a great section about who they are right writing a great section about who they are right.

John Demato 1:55

Yeah, it's one thing to say that you get on a stage and you're a $25,000 keynote speaker, but where are the photos that actually prove that you do that? You say that you're a coach, you work in groups, you come in, work with teams and organizations. Where are the photos that actually prove that you do this? At the end of the day, it's important to be able to back up your words with showing people what it actually looks like and that you in fact do these things to enhance your credibility and kind of inspire potential clients or members or however your business is set up to come into your world and learn a little bit more about how you can help solve their problems, and photos go a long way to helping bridge that gap.

Eric Eden 2:42

Ixor. It didn't happen right, Exactly, Exactly. So why don't you talk a little bit about some of the impact you've been able to deliver for clients? Because you have some unique things you do with photos. In addition to just how people get a great headshot for like their LinkedIn profile. You do a lot more than that. So talk about some of the impact you've had with some of your clients.

John Demato 3:06

Well, first of all, there's two ways to impact my clients. There's the professional side of it and then there's the personal side of it. So, professionally speaking, for a lot of my clients, they'll come in and you take a look at what their online presence looks like and there is a complete misalignment between how they want to be perceived by their audience and how they can help solve problems and the way that they're presented throughout their website, their social media content, their profiles, other places across their online presence. And what I do is really help zone in on the important aspects of what their day-to-day life looks like. And for some clients it's game-changing because when they put in proposals to either get on a stage or get a consulting contract, it makes the difference between winning and losing a 50-50 call from a client because of the perception that is created based on not just what they're saying about how they can help, but also the way they look and they back it up. There was one client in particular that did not use any professional photos at all for a while and once we went through a branding session, he was able to be able to use those photos in a very specific proposal for a big consulting contract and he won that contract and afterwards he kind of asked he asked the contact person with that organization what was the difference? And the contact person relayed back that the difference was you looked like the person that we needed to come in and help us, which was huge, obviously. So those kinds of stories do happen.

John Demato 4:58

In terms of the impact that images and high quality images created with intention and purpose can do for your business and on a personal level, these images, for a lot of people, are eye-opening, in the sense that I don't know about you, but there's a lot of people out there that, just frankly, don't like being in front of the camera.

John Demato 5:20

It's not exactly something that they look forward to. It's akin to going to the dentist and getting a root canal, and I was one of those people, by the way, for a very, very long time. So I completely empathize with those folks. But when they receive the portfolio and they're looking through these images and they see a wealth of emotion and personality and all of the activities that are captured during these branding sessions they see a wealth of emotion and personality and all of the activities that are captured during these branding sessions. They see themselves in a different light. They gain more confidence, they feel more self-assured when they put themselves out into the world and they see photos and themselves in those photos in a different way for the rest of their lives, because of that moment of being able to get in front of that camera with me and go through the process and create some magical photos.

Eric Eden 6:14

It's really interesting that a lot of people who are hiring speakers or executives can't really visualize sometimes if you don't give them those great photos or samples of the past magic moments to look at. It's very hard for people to sometimes make the leap from talking to someone on a Zoom to visualizing them on the stage in front of a thousand people, right.

John Demato 6:44

Well, it's not their magic trick, eric. Their magic trick is whatever it is that relates to their expertise and how they see the world and how they serve. So it makes all the sense in the world that for someone coming off the street and saying why would I need all of this? It's understandable because at the end of the day, it's a little more nuanced and involved than simply finding someone. Your cousin's nephew has a really nice camera and they're going to go take these really nice photos.

John Demato 7:21

Or even if it were another professional an adjacent photographer professional, say, a wedding photographer would have come in and shoot branding photos. They will probably in most cases look really pretty in terms of the technical aspects of the image. But in terms of the technical aspects of the image, but in terms of the essence of the person and the functionality and the creative latitude that the images offer the person and the person's team to be able to leverage in these marketing and promotional projects and different types of things that they put out there to promote themselves, it's going to miss the mark. So the reality is, experts hire experts for a reason and that's why people like myself and other photographers in my community exist to be able to serve folks like you and folks like those in your audience.

Eric Eden 8:14

So you do some really unique things too. A lot of the people who come on the show have a book and I think being an author can be a challenge sometimes, because people spend a year or more sometimes writing this great book and then they want to get out there and they want to sell and market it. But it's tough and I think you do something interesting with books, like with authors. Can you talk a little bit about that, sure?

John Demato 8:43

Well, there's two pieces to how I serve authors. Number one there is the traditional, or the ground level, foundational piece of the branding images, as well as if they're speaking as well. We capture that stuff as the base, but then the other layer to it is the book boudoir session, which is a session where I'm photographing the cover and the spine of the book, as well as the inside pages, and specifically inside we're looking at pull quotes, section headers, chapter titles, illustrations, other types of graphical elements that can be used, because, at the end of the day, when it comes to creating distinction from other experts in your space, I mean, you know you can throw a rock and you'll find a thousand other authors and a thousand other books that are related to your topic that you're writing about. So the way to stand out and create that distinction from others is by offering your audience an opportunity to preview the book in their hands, feel the weight of that book in their hands, through their eyes, and that's what these book boudoir images do. It creates dimensionality far beyond that of just simply using a two-dimensional graphical cover of the book.

John Demato 10:10

Now, listen, if that's all you have, then that's all you have. However, there are other opportunities out there to be able to create more vibrant, more compelling, more interesting types of visual content to support a book launch, as well as leverage these images far beyond the launch to create an opportunity to be able to promote your expertise, because your book is a direct representation of your expertise. Therefore, these images have a lot of play when it comes to putting together online content to be able to share with your people, to remind them of how you can help them.

Eric Eden 10:52

I think selling and marketing your book is very hard. A lot of authors struggle to sell more than a couple hundred copies after spending so much time and effort on it. So when I think about things like this, they would put people more in, like the top 1% of authors and having a visual story with your written story in a book. Because you get a book and it's just 300 pages of text. It's like give me a break, Give me some visuals with this.

John Demato 11:24

You know, I think that that's a huge difference. Well, I mean, eric, I mean, we're visual human beings. We make meaning through visuals far faster than how we make meaning through just words themselves. Now, obviously the words are important, but in order to keep people hooked in and captivated, using those visuals definitely goes a long way to support that goal as well.

Eric Eden 11:50

So talk a little bit about how you pull this all together. If someone, for example, is a keynote speaker and they're an author and they're an executive that has a corporate brand, how do you pull it all together from a visual storytelling perspective to help them build their executive brand? It all?

John Demato 12:11

starts with strategy. The last thing that you want to do is hire a photographer. Strategy. The last thing that you want to do is hire a photographer, grab a bunch of outfits and say to the photographer let's just go meet up somewhere. We'll go to a park and we'll kind of figure it out as we go. That's the last thing you want to do because it's it's it's leaving too much up to chance and that's not really intentional or purposeful.

John Demato 12:35

So being strategic with my clients before they get in front of the camera is the app. That's where it all begins, and the way that I do that is we conduct a thorough, comprehensive strategy call beforehand where I'm asking them at least 20 questions that across the who you are, who you serve, problems you solve and how you solve those problems spectrum, and I'm asking them questions about how they want to be perceived by their audience. What aspects of their personality do they want to convey to their audience? How do they serve their audience Like? What does the shop window look like? Are you a consultant? Do you coach? Do you speak on stages? Do you have a book? Is it all in person? Is it on a screen and in person? Is it audio? Do you have online courses.

John Demato 13:32

I'm trying to do, then, is create an itemized shot sheet based on their answers. That creates a very systematized process to be able to say, when that camera comes out of the bag during our portrait session, we know exactly what we're shooting, the types of emotions that we're going after to capture the activities in which you're engaged in front of the camera, as well as what you're going to wear and the location that we're going to shoot. There is nothing left to chance. There is room for extemporaneous thought in terms of oh, this might be cool if we did this and this and this, but then we're easily able to get back on track because of the fact that we had the strategy call, we created the shot sheet and we know exactly what we're going after to be able to satisfy all of the different ways in which they want to be perceived by their audience.

Eric Eden 14:34

I like that. That sounds like a much more organized way to approach it, rather than let's just wing it and see what happens when it's so important. For all the reasons that we've been talking about, I think that's really great. What advice do you have for people who really want to build their executive brand, their personal brand?

John Demato 15:00

their executive brand, their personal brand. The first place to start is to assess exactly where you are right now. Take a look at all of the different places that you have a touchpoint online and think to yourself what's working here, what needs to be improved? Do I recognize this person in the photos? Is this an accurate representation of where I am in my business, or is it time for me to make some updates, to be more intentional about my visual storytelling and to be able to get everything up to speed so that you have the confidence in knowing that, whenever you have a conversation with someone, wherever that happens to be online or in real life, that the moment that they look you up anywhere could be LinkedIn, could be your site, could be some professional trade organization profile that you have, whatever the case may be, that everything is consistent across every single touch point and that it resonates with you deeply and that you're confident and, dare I say, proud to actually put yourself out there in that way.

Eric Eden 16:08

You don't get a second chance to make a first impression, right, yeah?

John Demato 16:11

What was that? A deodorant? I don't remember where that one came from, but and it's cliche as hell, but it is so true. It's absolutely the truth, and you only have a mere what seven seconds to be able to make that impression, so make sure that it counts everywhere.

Showcasing Visual Storytelling Resources

Eric Eden 16:32

Absolutely so. Do you have some resources that people can check out your website, other resources people can look at to get a better idea of what we're talking about here?

John Demato 16:43

Yeah, sure, you mentioned my website. It's a very complicated URL, johndomatocom. Now, if someone were out there and interested in learning a little bit more about what visual storytelling means and what it specifically means for an expert-based business, I have a blog and I write three blogs a week. You could sign up for that on my website as well. And if you're curious to follow along in my journey to see what I've been up to and what I'm doing with my clients, I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook.

Eric Eden 17:20

Awesome. Well, I'm going to link to your website and show notes so people can easily get to that site and check it out. Sounds like a great blog as well, so really appreciate you being with us today. Thank you for sharing these insights and your stories. We appreciate it.

John Demato 17:37

The pleasure was all on this side of the screen, my friend. Thank you for having me.