Insight from industry leaders

As you build your personal brand as an expert, or a coach, or a practitioner in the wellness industry, you will realise that your reputation is paramount. In a digital era, there is more access than ever before to tools and platforms that will help you to reach people with your expertise. Having a strong reputation and a willingness to share your knowledge will be what enables you to be seen as a thought leader. And, as somebody that is sought out for their authority on a particular subject matter, be that gut health, mobility, Chinese medicine, mental health, or something else.

This leads to fantastic career opportunities because if your audience sees great value in what you share, then they will develop a level of trust in you, and look to you as an authority. As you’ll hear in the following interview excerpts, it is critical when getting started that you consider the importance of credibility. And that, in building credibility you are creating a relationship with your audience where this kind of trust exists. In building a personal brand, there are also challenges that come from being a public figure, or a spokesperson. And we’ll also hear about this. So couple of things. Firstly, credibility. I think the health and fitness industry has struggled with its credible identity for a while.

And I do think that if you’re entering in the market, you should have all the appropriate qualifications, and you should be able to lean back on the advice that you’re giving. So that’s first thing. Second thing is, like really find your voice. We’ve talked about niching today. If you’re doing videos and social, if you’re doing graphics, if you’re doing whatever– podcasts, it doesn’t matter– really find your voice. Because if you want to work with people, if you want to bring something different to the market, then we need to hear your voice. We need to hear your truth. What is it that you’re about? So make sure you’re speaking that.

And then coupled with that is, because hopefully you’re bought in the process, you’re feeling passionate. Make as many friends as possible. Like make friends with Ben Coomber– whoever the Ben Coomber is in your industry, or whatever like– make friends with all these people. Like start to give advice, start to talk to people, start to share. Because when they think of the person that’s into beauty and skin care, like perhaps they’ll think of you. Or when they’re thinking of recruitment like, perhaps they’ll think of you. We can’t continue to move forward in business if we don’t have the right friends in the right places. Or it makes it a lot harder.

You know if I am able to ring up whoever because I need to get somewhere and they know somewhere, like how do I make that phone call? How did it happen? What work have I done to align myself with those people? Um but in saying that, please do it in a genuine way. There’s so many people out in business that think, oh, well if I network, I’ll get to my goal of getting rich quicker. And you can sniff it a mile off. Like I get requests all the time for people to come on my podcast. And I know that they only want to come on because they’re trying to get leverage of an audience. Which is fine, I get that.

But they’re like, oh, I listened to a show once of yours, and I picked out a thing. And like you can see it’s a pre-written way to get into someone’s kind of good books– to get into a podcast. It’s like people can see your genuineness. Like if you really want to be in the fitness industry, it should be easy to just talk and share ideas, and make friends. Rather than like, I’m going to make friends because it will get me further forward in business. Um, So be genuine in your approach to that, but it’s a quick way to get places. I never had a desire to be a huge public profile with nutrition.

I would share– at the beginning– some holiday pictures, and then realised that as a health professional perhaps that isn’t portraying me in the best light. Because people don’t want to see me on holiday. And then some people do. It was getting a balance between giving out information– ultimately I have to keep go, I go back every time I do a post on Instagram, or I put myself out there in the public eye. I would always say to myself, how is this helping other people? So everything I do, I try and bring it back and think, if I’m doing this, or I’m working with a brand here, how can that help someone else?

And that I think has helped me steer through and stay true to my brand. We are never experts as much as expert is the phrase we use. Is that I still feel I’m always learning and that I will never know everything. And I think if you go in there believing everything, that is a bit of a problem– just to name out, because I don’t think anybody will ever know everything. It’s so true. It’s so true. And you’re right. And being an expert is a journey that is a continually evolving journey, isn’t it? I did chuckle to myself when people refer to me. It’s very flattering.

It’s very humbling, but I know– I think oh gosh, if only they knew the doubts I have in my head every single day. The more you know, the less you know, is the phrase that seems to come out. But my advice would really be, how to think about why you got into doing what you do. People buy people. People will trust you more if you’re able to show a little bit of compassion and be yourself. So yes, it is a risk. And it can be scary putting yourself out there online, but I was around on social media at a time when there weren’t health professionals online.

And now we have so many of them, and I’m so pleased because that’s what I always wanted. Otherwise, those people will go looking in the wrong areas for the advice that they need, regardless of what field you’re in. If you’re an expert in um in building a brand– in business. If you’re an expert of finance, if you’re an expert of health, if you’re an expert– it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you are giving good advice, please get out there and do it. Because otherwise someone else is going to do it, and they may not do it as well as you can. So share your passion, and make sure you stay true to the reason you started.

Because if you don’t pull yourself back in, you can get swept up.