Meet Danielle Hughes

Danielle Hughes is the creator of the Personality Brand. She teaches clients how to bring more of themselves into their message so they feel comfortable expressing it and can convey what makes them different from their competition, attracting the right audience and repelling the wrong one. Often referred to as a magician with words, while she can’t pull a rabbit out of her hat, she can hone your brand message and deadlift you or your employees, but not at the same time. That’s just irresponsible. (note: Danielle is

available for office party tricks and accepts payment in bottles of Bordeaux.)

What is a personality brand and why does someone need one? 

Yes, so personal brand is everywhere. And the word personal means private. So why are we sharing our private thoughts, habits, behaviors with people that we don't know? But our personality is who we are. It's always on display and we dial it up and we dial it down, depending on who we're interacting with. So people that we have just met might get a small glimmer of our personality. Our friends and family get too much of our personality.  And so to me, when you cultivate a personality brand, in business, it puts you in control of what you want to share with the people that you're meeting or the people that you're interacting with, or even your clients or customers, and allows you to say this is what I want you to know about me in order to form the necessary connections that we need to do business.

But it also creates a line in the sand of things that you're not going to share because they're no one's business and they will remain private.

What if someone's an introvert?

So, the beauty of personality brand is that you are in control. So, just because you're introverted doesn't mean you're not interesting. Doesn't mean you don't have hobbies. And I always say, think about if you were stuck in an elevator with someone (which I know is a nightmare for an introvert). What is the one thing that you could talk about with this person for an hour and it would not freak you out? And what is that thing that you would love to talk to them about if you found out that they shared that hobby or that passion with you? And we're just starting there. We're just putting that little thing, even if it's at the end of your title your LinkedIn title. And it just says like triathlete or knitter or, you know, lover of pugs.

It's gotta be a little something and that's enough. And you can just start there and then you can baby step it to more if you feel comfortable with more. But I always tell people, just because you're introverted or just because you're shy, you have things that you love to do that I'm sure help you connect to other people.

Connect with Danielle!

LinkedIn

Instagram

www.morethanwordscopy.com

Personality Brand Bio Checklist 

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[00:00:18] Lori Highby: Hey everybody, Lori Highby here. Welcome to the Social Capital Podcast. Our show notes are found at socialcapitalpodcast. com. To you, the listener, I want you to know that I appreciate you and I'm thrilled to have you here for another episode. If there is ever anything that I can do to support you, please reach out.

LinkedIn is the channel that you're going to find me on. Just search for Lori Highby. You can simply click the follow button as I post daily information about marketing strategy, tips, all podcast episodes, and upcoming events you might see me at. If you'd like to connect, make sure to send a note with your connection request that references Social Capital.

I can't wait to hear from you. Social Capital Podcast is sponsored by Keystone Click, a strategic digital marketing agency that believes in order to successfully market to your ideal customer, you have to first understand your customer. Learn more at KeystoneClick. com.

The topic of relationships ties very closely with marketing. That's why I'm bringing on marketing experts with a variety of backgrounds for you to learn and grow from. Today's guest is Danielle Hughes. Danielle is the creator of the Personality Brand. She teaches clients how to bring more of themselves into their message so they can feel comfortable expressing it and can convey what makes them different from their competition, attracting the right audience and repelling the wrong one. Often referred to as a magician with words, while she can't pull a rabbit out of her hat, she can hone your brand message and deadlift you or your employees, but not at the same time. That's just irresponsible. Side note, Danielle is available for office party tricks and accepts payment in bottles of Bordeaux. Danielle, welcome to the show.

I love it.

[00:02:05] Danielle Hughes: Thank you. Thank you. I feel like, you know, when you call yourself whatever you want, right? It's like, sure, I'm a word magician. Sure, I'm this. Who's gonna say I'm not?

But hey, let's dive into this a little bit. So what is a personality brand and why does someone need one?

It's always on display and we dial it up and we dial it down, depending on who we're interacting with. So people that we have just met might get a small glimmer of our personality. Our friends and family get too much of our personality. And so to me, when you cultivate a personality brand, in business, it puts you in control of what you want to share with the people that you're meeting or the people that you're interacting with, or even your clients or customers, and allows you to say, this is what I want you to know about me in order to form the necessary connections that we need to do business.

But it also creates a line in the sand of things that you're not going to share because they're no one's business and they will remain private.

[00:03:56] Danielle Hughes: Yes, everyone. And why this matters is because in order to be visible inside of your organization, you have to be known for something and you have to be able to showcase who you are and you have to be able to showcase your value.

And I think so many people, you know, adopt the title of their job or the description of their job as themselves, but your job title or even your job description most likely wasn't written specifically for you, right? It was written to fill that role and to do a bunch of tasks, but how you embody it and what you bring to the table are going to be very different from maybe the person before you or the person after you.

So figuring out how to put your own stamp on things and showcase your own differentiators, it's what is what's going to help you cultivate those relationships in the workplace and get noticed for all of the right reasons.

[00:05:18] Danielle Hughes: And it makes you more comfortable and more confident, right? If you can be yourself. And you're not constantly thinking about, you know, what you can reveal or what you can't reveal. You're going to be able to do your best work. But if you're always spending time in the workplace thinking like, Oh, I can't show this to people or I can't say this. It's gonna impact the quality of work and the way that you're able to show up and bring the most value.

[00:06:03] Danielle Hughes: I mean, there's a bunch of things that you can do. I talk about, you know, we want to ace our personality brand. So A) for authenticity. So thinking about how you can bring more of your authentic self to your bio, clarity is probably the most important. Like, how do you get clear on who you are, who you're talking to? What makes you different? And the, and the benefit that they're going to get from working with you.

And then that E is like that little something extra, right? Your hobbies or your passions, something that's going to resonate with the right people and help you stand out. And the, you know, the trick is we don't want to ever open up our bio with seasoned executive with X number of years experience. You know, I like to say that seasoning is for chicken cutlets.

You know, it's, it's too expected. It's too, like you said, generic, right? Everybody can say that. So you look at your bio with a critical eye. And if it sounds like somebody else can put their name in your bio, it's not enough you. So think about how do you bring again more of your own personality, but also more of how you think more of what makes you makes you different.

Can you open up your bio with a story instead and talk about, you know, ever since I was a child, I've wanted to do X, Y and Z. Or can you make it really customer focused and, you know, say something like, you know, you know, organizations today are looking for X, you know one, two and three.. I am, you know, uniquely qualified to help you get to these things because. So you're trying to just kind of jar someone I say out of their stupor. And get them to pay attention. And it's anything that's different is going to get someone to want to read more. How do you start this conversation? How do you get them interested? How do you get them engaged in what you have to say?

And so that's not a good use of that section, but it, it's a storytelling place and it's really, to put that unique, authentic positioning and self and voice I actually throw a couple personal nuggets in my bio and I am somewhat shocked and surprised at how many people actually comment to me on that, which tells me one they're reading the bio.

They're not just skimming it. So because it's not at the top. It's kind of in the middle . But they're intrigued by it. You know, I say I play hockey. I say I have a Batman collection, you know. These are like weird obscure things that not everyone talks about. But it's a conversation starter. It kind of lightens the tone a little bit and gives people a feel for who I am. So I agree. You don't want something that, you know, you could just place someone else's name on and it's the exact same story that's being told.

Or, oh, she's the hockey, you know, the hockey chick.

[00:09:39] Danielle Hughes: Cause nobody cares, right? Cause no one cares about what we do, right? That's why I like the wine thing for me or the weightlifting. Those are the most interesting things and the things people comment on. Yeah. And to your point, you know, every one of my clients, whenever they put anything, you know, their hobby or something they love in their LinkedIn profile, It's the most commented thing about them because it's, you know, it's human and that's what we relate to.

It's hard to relate to like impressions and engagement and metrics, but you can relate to, you know, something that somebody loves to do on the weekends. And that really is something that lights them up.

[00:10:24] Danielle Hughes: So that's the beauty of personality brand is that it, you are in control. So just because you're introverted doesn't mean you're not interesting. Doesn't mean you don't have hobbies. And I always say, think about if you were stuck in an elevator for someone, which I know is a nightmare for an introvert, what is the one thing that you could talk about with this person for an hour and it would not freak you out. And what is that thing that you would love to talk to them about if you found out that they shared that hobby or that passion with you? And we're just starting there. We're just putting that little thing, even if it's at the end of your title your LinkedIn title. And it just says like triathlete or knitter or, you know, lover of pugs.

It, it's gotta be a little something and that's enough. And you can just start there and then you can baby step it to more if you feel comfortable with more. But I always tell people, I don't, just because you're introverted or just because you're shy, you have things that you love to do that I'm sure help you connect to other people.

So what are those things that are going to help you connect in the professional space and not just with your friends and family?

[00:11:39] Danielle Hughes: I mean, it's gotta be something.

[00:11:52] Danielle Hughes: And it doesn't even need to be obscure, Lori, right? It can be like not obscure. And I think a lot of people, what I find is what I see is that they think that they are not interesting and we all just think that we're the same as everybody else and we're not. And so the more you can just kind of embrace and own the fact that there are unique qualities to all of us, that we all have something interesting about us, that makes it easier. But I think so many people are just either afraid or they really don't think that they have anything to share.

And then they find that they really do have something to share and they've just not maybe thought about it in that way, or they've just never thought that, you know, this aspect of their life could be something that's shared.

All right, let's change the conversation to something a little bit more fun. If you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of, less of, or differently with regards to your professional career?

Less, I think I would have told myself to put less pressure. And actually take some time after college to travel before I jumped right in, like I was at a school and right into a job and not realizing that I would be working for the rest of my life. You know and then what was the third thing, more or less and...

[00:13:24] Danielle Hughes: Differently. I mean so much. Differently... I mean, I feel like the more and the lesser kind of part of the differently, but I don't, I think I would have taken differently would have been like taking more risks. I very much played it safe and I went into things that felt very safe and comfortable and I didn't stick with things that felt risky.

So I think I would have told myself at that point, because I was young enough that I should have just, I could have done things in a more risky manner and just seeing what stuck to the wall.

[00:14:10] Danielle Hughes: Exactly. Exactly.

[00:14:19] Danielle Hughes: Ooh. So I would love to know how you got into hockey.

So being his, his first born, I was on skates when I was two years old. And I played a little bit when I was really, really young. And then my mom said that I should be in dance and I didn't like that. But when I was in high school and was able to drive, I joined an adult league and I've been playing ever since.

[00:14:59] Lori Highby: Sure. Yeah.

[00:15:06] Lori Highby: Ooh, great question. I actually made a commercial about my marketing agency using hockey as like the NLG song. Maybe include that in the show notes here. Yeah. But number one is team. I mean, it's a team sport without any doubt and marketing and business and is very much a team sport. It's not a it's not a solo activity. And I would say number two is thinking ahead and being being strategic. So, you know, there's a great quote by Wayne Gretzky to skate to where the puck is going, not to where it's been.

And I think that's a very true statement, especially in the ever changing digital marketing world. You know, you want to, you want to always kind of be thinking about what's happening next, not necessarily what's happening yesterday or today. So I would say those are probably the two biggest analogies.

I I'd say the third one is, is practice, you know, I mean you can't just jump in, and I think that's a big challenge that I know I face is that the digital marketing space, you probably experience this too, is very low barrier to entry because a lot of people can say they're social media experts or, or whatnot, because all they really need is, you know, some sort of device and access to the Internet.

But putting a lot of time and energy and understanding the strategic play and the tactics that are, you know, part of that play. The more that you practice and put those into motion, the, the better the outcome's going to be at the end of the day. So I think that ties into hockey very well is, you know, you gotta, you gotta practice what you're doing and you have to understand kind of the thinking and the reasoning why behind the move to really get into a, a mode of it's going to work for me because I've been doing it so often and I'm confident in it.

[00:17:06] Lori Highby: Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. I mean worlds collide in so many different ways and you don't have to silo your work life from your you know, your hobbies and your your personal and family I mean, there's there's definitely crossovers and and things that it is what makes you uniquely you.

[00:17:27] Lori Highby: Well, so you've got an offer for our listeners, don't you?

[00:18:25] Lori Highby: Great. And I know there's a link for that information and we will include that in our show notes. All right, Danielle, any final words of wisdom that you want to leave with our listeners?

[00:18:58] Lori Highby: Love that. All right. So if anyone was interested in getting in contact with you, what's the best way that they can reach you?

[00:19:22] Lori Highby: All right. Well, include that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Great conversation.

[00:19:30] Lori Highby: It sure was. All right. This wraps up our episode of Social Capital. A huge thank you to Danielle for taking the time to connect with us.

If you have a burning marketing or relationship question, just reach out. I'd love to answer it on the show. And as mentioned before, let's connect on LinkedIn. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and I hope you have enjoyed today's show. Today, go out there and get noticed.