Produced By - Rebuilding from Zero: How Loss Sparked a Brand Reinvention | #116: Alana Sparrow

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

Alana Sparrow is a brand strategist, visual storyteller, and co-founder of The Foundry. With 35 years in branding and 25 years as a business owner, she helps leaders craft personal brands that reflect who they are and what they stand for. From executive positioning to employer branding, her experience runs deep, and her creative approach stands out.In this episode, we dive into her journey of rebuilding after personal loss, growing from 800 to over 27,000 LinkedIn connections, and using personal branding to unlock real business growth. You’ll hear practical advice on how to show up online, build trust, and create a brand with lasting impact. It’s part story, part strategy, and part creative masterclass from someone who truly walks the talk.Connect with Alana:https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanasparrow/https://www.instagram.com/alanasparrowhttps://www.thefoundrysite.com/_15/https://alanasparrow.com/Timestamps:00:00 – Why personal brands can change the world01:00 – Podcast intro and guest welcome01:23 – Alana’s background: 35 years in branding02:13 – How personal branding entered her business03:28 – The pandemic’s impact on her agency04:44 – Losing her mother and stepping back from work05:53 – Rebuilding with LinkedIn after 800 connections07:06 – How she tripled revenue in under a year08:04 – How competitors reacted during COVID09:25 – Why she doesn’t care about competition10:24 – Realising LinkedIn’s full potential11:48 – Growing 97k Instagram followers before LinkedIn13:05 – Learning LinkedIn strategy from Laura Acosta15:29 – Applying storytelling skills to the platform17:12 – Handling criticism and passive-aggressive comments18:53 – Why negative feedback is rare on LinkedIn20:45 – Dealing with AI-generated comments23:27 – Why going viral can hurt your brand25:54 – The Instagram post that gained 17k followers (and backfired)27:46 – Choosing universal topics that attract the right audience28:18 – Why she keeps showing up on LinkedIn30:12 – Long-term goals beyond social media posting31:24 – Why she’ll never outsource her content creation32:26 – Common personal branding mistakes on LinkedIn34:36 – Why experimenting without strategy can backfire36:47 – The importance of strong foundations and positioning39:38 – Why audience size doesn’t equal a healthy business40:55 – How engagement pods hurt the platform43:46 – Why quality growth matters more than quantity44:03 – Chasing sunshine and water in her free time44:34 – Her dog Junie and personal life45:30 – Why work and hobbies often blend together45:57 – Where to find Alana online46:33 – Final personal branding advice48:00 – Podcast closing and thank you Connect with Tomas:X: https://x.com/TomasLoucky⁠⁠⁠Stan: https://stan.store/TommenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasloucky/⁠⁠Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistommen/⁠⁠Unproduced:Newsletter: https://unproduced.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@unproducednotesSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033Ddo8ibDlLYoaP7FFLIWMore:Links: https://linktr.ee/produced_by⁠⁠⁠Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://producednewsletter.substack.com/⁠The Podcast Club: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/25420030/Tools & gear that support the show:Metricool: https://f.mtr.cool/HRJBZKRiverside: https://riverside.sjv.io/vDnDodFavikon: https://www.favikon.com?fpr=tommenRa Optics: https://ra-optics.myshopify.com/discount/TOMMEN?rfsn=8803777.591d19JamX: https://jamx.ai/podcasters-offer?ref_id=e02d48af-ef66-4e76-b804-c2e8d282a8bfSome links are affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. If you find them useful, using these links helps keep the podcast running. Thank you!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Secondary and maybe even tied to it equally is my desire to help other people make money and improve their likelihoods or advance their careers or advance their messages out in the world. So I have a mission and I have a personal philosophy that I truly believe that personal brands have the ability to change the world. And because they are tied to our livelihoods, they can be tied to our businesses, they tied to our careers and to the things that are most important. important to us. So that's a major motivator for me to show up. Now, that is not to say that there are days where I get so mad and so annoyed because of constant ages, gain network laying, and things that don't make sense and that I'm happy to show up and do the work. But when the goalpost is constantly being moved, it makes me crazy. But I just remind myself of my goals and that sort of thing. But

also at the same time, I have a long-term plan. Before we dive into today's episode, please hit that subscribe button. Your support helps us grow and inspire more people on their journeys. Thank you. Hello, Alana. Thank you for joining us today and welcome to the show. Welcome and thank you for having me. So, Alana, for those who don't know you, can you please introduce yourself?

So hi, I'm Alana Sparrow. I am a brand strategist, and I've been in the business of building brands for 35 years. I've been a business owner for 25 years and the current iteration of my agency for 18 years. That's what I call some experience, because as I was doing some homework before, you know, since we are on LinkedIn, you can see like people who specialize in branding, personal branding and stuff like that. What I think or I can, I feel like that I can confidently say that I haven't come across as experienced as you are. So can you tell us, how did you actually discover the passion for personal branding? Because I know that before you studied art, you have a lot of experience, but how did this passion start in the first place?

Yeah, so with personal branding came to be on my radar in, Starting in around the year 2021, my agency was doing a lot of work in the employer branding space. Personal brands of executives, leadership, very important in the world of employer brands. So it was on my radar at that point. I've always been the face of my brand in the sense that I'm the one who does the sales, I do the pitches, I'm the one who brings business into our agency. And so from that perspective, I understood that as a concept, how I show up and that sort of thing, but not in the traditional sense of what we think about personal brands at this point,

having a strong presence on social media, that sort of thing. That really came for me personally in the year 2023. And there's an interesting story behind that. But that's really when personal brands, it's kind of in that time frame that they were, we were looking into them in our agency as far as complement to the services that we were already provided. You mentioned some interesting story. Would you mind telling us more?

No, no. Why not? Why not? It's quite irrelevant to my feelings behind them, why I feel that they're so important and so valuable to so many people is that during 2020, you know, our business, like everybody's business, heavily impacted by the pandemic, videography was 60% of our revenue, as I mentioned, employer brands, we were making corporate documentaries and a lot of that work. And so when the whole world shut down, we lost multiple six-figure revenue that year. I mean, it was really

pretty devastating. But because we had our agency was built remote first, starting in 2017, we were able to ship things around and get through that first two years. You know, so 2020, 2021, we're coming out of 2022. Two years, videography work for us was closed down in the state of New York. We didn't have access to it. So now we're trying to ramp things back off. They opened the market back up. So just as that's coming online, my mom died suddenly.

So, yeah. Sorry, too, who don't? Thank you. It's, I mean, it was just, it was a devastating blow. And one that I didn't see coming, kind of one of those things. So now I was just completely offline. We were limping along. We were in many ways that during that year, worse off than we were during the pandemic,

because I was so unclubbed from the business. And so then come 2023, when I finally emotionally came back out of it, I realized, whoa, I'm kind of in a mess. And now we're playing catch up because all of the money that people were, businesses were, you know, getting along with is now going away. So people are not spending as much. There's a lot of things going on. So I'm now having to fix my business ASAP.

So I came to LinkedIn to reconnect to my network. I only had about 800 connections. Our work has been done around the world, but the way I build those relationships was in a very traditional way, not on social media. And so I decided that I had already done all this research on personal brands that their importance to business health and all of that. And I said, you know, I really think that if I'm going to do this,

I think that there's a lot of traction for us here that will allow us to scale our business in a way that I didn't want to be in a position again of having a market, a segment of my revenue pulled away because of the change in the market. So that's what I did. I used myself as a case study, 800 connections in October of 2020, three. here I am not even two years yet and I'm over 27,000 completely within three months turned our revenue right around and then a year doubled that triple and you know it's I've never looked back it's been absolutely amazing what it's done for my business and that is the squirrely way I got to personal brand no no you explained it really well and based on what you said on your

online presence. I would assume that you've been kind of in the game of personal branding for a long time, whether it's LinkedIn or other social media. I was really impressed that, as you said, you started quite late and as a result of COVID. So I think you're just doing amazing. And I think perfect example that when there are conditions like the COVID, that you found a new solution, new path, and you're really smashing it now. So really well done. Thank you. Thank you. And also looking back, like during that period of the COVID, what was the market like? Such as, for example, your competitors, did they also switch to brand it?

Because as you said, you couldn't do really photography and stuff like that. Because even when I remember about the COVID, what was it like? So was it less saturated? Was there already a lot of competition or what was it like? So during that time, it was really interesting because a lot of agents, that were similar in size to us and even larger. Some closed entirely. Some were joined other forces with other agencies.

So in our region, it was a big upside down flip and turn. And some decided to lean into a remote video capture. We opted not to make that investment. We didn't want to do that. And because it's just all different tech, equipment, and that sort of thing, and that's just not the kind of work that we were doing. We really wanted to be able to continue with the type of work that we were doing and the quality of the videography for a craftsman. And it wasn't just about paying the bills. We found other ways that didn't require additional overhead of equipment and tech and learning curves.

And all of that to do is. So that's what we saw, but as far as other competition in my immediate marketplace, leveraging personal branding as a business offering, I've not seen that. And honestly, it doesn't even matter to me if they are because the world is my market. I don't care. And honestly, I can't service everyone anyway. I've never looked at competition that way. And even if there was competition, if you do it better than them,

you can attract anyone as your clients, right? Yeah, I mean, you need competition in the market. It's what makes it healthy. It's what makes it better and, you know, allows us to call in the people that we really want to serve. It's how we're able to differentiate if we, you know, there's no. Yeah. And what pushes you forward as well to improve?

Yeah. think so. I think so. And you said before that you joined LinkedIn or you started more seriously. Is it also like the moment when you basically discovered the potential in LinkedIn? Because if I remember correctly, you said, you said like 800 followers or something like that. So was that also the moment when you started taking the platform more seriously? Yes, I never thought. So LinkedIn served for us as a way to showcase our work. We would brag about our clients. We would, you know, it was very cliche. We used it the same cliche way that so many people do. I mean, very good at it, actually. It was brilliant. And while social media campaigns and organic crowdsourcing was a service that we provided,

we put a lot of people on the map with that. You know, I won $50,000 from Pepsi through a organic social campaign. So I understood social media and its potential to get eyeballs on things, put butts in seats for events and that sort of thing, but I had not really looked at it in a way to leverage and grow my business in that way. So that was new to me. So it was really being there, doing the research around personal branding and other people who were doing it when my eyes really kind of opened up to where have you been? Girl, have you been to speak? Because I'd been at the flash in 2009.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we've got all such thoughts when we joined the platform. Like, oh, my God, where have I been all the time? Why haven't I joined earlier? Yeah, yeah. Because when I came to LinkedIn, I had 97,000 followers on Instagram.

Oh, yeah. That's impressive. Yeah, it's so I know how to grow a social account, but I hadn't even, but on Instagram, it was really more around my gray hair grow out. And then I would talk about things that were impacting my business that way. Things like that went around rent-iss issues, workplace. But it was a lot of talk. So it was about building social presence more so than a revenue driver. And the income that I earned from it were through collaborations and, you know, I was not pulling clients in, but also too, during that time, our focus was still very much around the business branding piece of it, not personal one-to-one. And these were larger, larger-scale businesses, not solo entrepreneurs or individual businesses in that way. Yeah. And as you just mentioned, Instagram, when you started on LinkedIn, did it help you?

Like, for example, you announced it and people came to follow you or did you treat it separately? Or what influence it had like when it comes to the following on LinkedIn? When I came to LinkedIn, I was really not sure how to do it, what to talk about. You know, I fumbled. Some of my early poster just trashed. I can relate to that. they weren't very good. I felt like, you know, a little bit of watching what other people were doing. And I, versus actually putting on my grand strategist hat, doing the work I know how to do.

I was looking to other people for that security blanket. And then I came across Lara Acosta. And she absolutely resonated with me. I loved her energy. I loved what she was putting forward. forward. It made so much sense to me. And I felt like I was at a point in time in this whole place and space of what I was doing, where I was in my business, where I needed to get the point A to point B. I didn't have time to mess around. I didn't have time to, you know, learn this on my

own, you know, watch this and look at that, take this little thing. I needed to collapse time. I needed to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. And she convinced me she could make that happen. And she really did. So what I learned from her was how to show up on the platform, how to best leverage it, all of that. So that was really just a tremendous experience, the community aspect of it. I already had. I knew how to write well.

I knew how to tell a story. I understood how to create my positioning, all of that. I just needed to understand how to do that on LinkedIn. And I learned so much from her about so many other things. And really just, it was really tremendous. And I've always given her a ton of credit for that and always will. She's amazing. I heard her name so many times across my podcast and the people that I've spoken with.

So I can only agree. And would you expect or even plan that in the future, now when we are looking back, that you would become such a person as well, such as that people follow, learn from, your inspiration for them? Would you expect that or did you even like have plans for that? Well, that I have to revert back to the Instagram experience, simply because when I put, I put something forward, which was the struggle I was having personally, emotionally, you know, around growing out my gray hair, like all the baggage that comes with that, that you're unpacking it. And what I didn't realize was how much people were starved for that, that they were experiencing it too.

And we're also talking the types of conversations I was having. It was men, women, you know, a whole, a pretty broad age range. So I knew the potential of sharing my story, pulling people in from that emotional perspective. I didn't expect that. That I didn't expect. But when I came to LinkedIn, I knew I could do that here too because I saw it happen over there. Finding what that positioning and how that voice would show up on LinkedIn was there was really kind of an experimentation phase and space to test it. I have to test it live.

I didn't want to come in and say, this is exactly it because you have to test. You have to do that. And I would say it probably took me, you know, kind of a solid three, four months before I felt like, okay, I get where I'm going. I get where I can write, how I can write, and, you know, not do the formulas, although appreciate the formulas that are there. But now how can I leverage those and still have my own voice show up, my own way of formatting and unfolding the story and all of that sort of thing? and my own way of selling and that. Have you also experienced or received any more of a negative feedback? Because when it comes to LinkedIn,

I feel like that people sometimes see that as that corporate formal platform. And sometimes it feels like, I don't know, that some people don't like when you post something more personal, whether it's, I don't know, pictures of your family or maybe the gym or something similar. So have you also experienced it that maybe they told you that it's not appropriate for LinkedIn or it's not a platform for that? I've had it not directly coming after name. I've had people like passive aggressively do it, like write their own post.

And then make sideways kind of editorial commentary about what I'm doing. As though I'm not, no, who they're talking about or what they're referring to. A couple of times people have said, this is that stop making LinkedIn like Facebook. But Chipin is like that, I don't even know, I don't really even know what that means. Because to me, Facebook is a lot of raw hostility. And that's not what I do. So I don't even know what that means. They didn't give me enough of like an intellectual comment.

You know, I don't even know how to plot that. But what I find on LinkedIn is that it's pretty challenging to even get negative feedback. And you have to really, I think, cross a lot of lines to get and pulled negative feedback in. You really do have to show up as the aggressor in the conversation. And here's why I see that pattern. I see it for one primary reason. is it is tied directly to people's livelihoods. This platform, like no other platform, is tied to people's livelihoods.

So whether it's their career, you know, it's your job resonate, or if you're growing a business. And one could say that Instagram and YouTube and those channels have that too, but not in the same way that it's tied to that long work history, the way that they did is. And so it's just, it's completely different. And LinkedIn does not allow for anonymous profiles and all the other platforms allow for different types of anonymity. That is a good point, yeah, because it's not like, I don't know, on other platforms,

I can see it like on YouTube, you know, someone comments, some silly comments, they don't even have a profile picture and the name. But on LinkedIn, I remember there was like a period when there were bots spamming, but thank God it disappeared. So let's hope it stays like that. And of course, I'm glad to hear that there was no negative feedback. Yeah, yeah.

Honestly, I would rather natural, legitimate, negative feedback than all the AI comments that I get. I definitely would rather have that because at least then that means we're having at least some legitimate dialogue. Like, it's real. It may not be productive, but at least it's real and emotional. And I at least have your thought in here versus just a regurgitation or a rewording of my intellectual property. And then you don't know even what to answer to such comments. It's like, yeah, okay. And every now I'm going to depend on, like, if I haven't had coffee, before I start commenting, I can get salty back to people.

I've kind of regret it, you know, because I'm thinking that's, you're allowing us to not bring out a good quality, but I just some days I just don't have the patience for it. I've gotten actually, because Favicon has their rating system, and I'd always really kind of respected that platform. You know, I've spent my career where awards and recognition and rankings in that way, they matter to, they don't matter to me, but they matter to clients. Clients like that.

They want to see that. They want to be associated to winners. And it's natural. It's just, it's what happens psychologically. And so Fabricon's algorithm is constantly changing. And one of the things that, you know, when it, it's scraped my content, it said, you know, the engagement's really good, but it made a comment about the AI, it made a note about the AI comments that there's definitely GPT, you know, they might not be bought.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, they're not genuine. It will impact your ranking with them if you have too many of those. So I just delete them. Now, if they are, I just delete them, which also impacts overall engagement. And I don't like doing that. But I don't have time. I write a lot of posts around AI comments.

I've done that. You know, that doesn't serve. After a while, you know, I don't need to be the nag. The nanny. No, but that's like the topic that I discuss almost with the majority of the guests, because I completely agree with you and share your opinion. And although, you know, you can be discussing that all the time, but still people do it, people keep doing that, and I didn't know what you said about

Feveicon. And I can sit on my post as well, and as you said, I don't know what to answer to such comments. It's like, yes, okay, thank you. I agree. Babes not like that. Sometimes I purposely call them out as well, which is funny to see their reaction if they answer to that, but I cannot imagine deleting that. I don't know. I hope that one day it changes, or people realize that it's doing more harm than good commenting like that. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Because people who I ever thought would to sort to that have.

And I don't know that they're personally doing it, but they're higher in BAs and that's how VAs make me efficiently is by doing that, not by original thoughts. Yeah. No, I cannot agree. Are you struggling to stay consistent on LinkedIn? Fanpost helps you create high quality posts in minutes, so you can write faster, show up more, and stress way less. Built by creators for creators is the easiest way to grow your presents without burning out. Try it free at fanpost.com.

And as we are speaking about LinkedIn, I'm pretty sure that this is the question that you get a lot, but I just have to ask you because I'm curious and I'm sure that audience would like to know, which is if someone asks you, what is your advice when it comes to LinkedIn growth or, you know, how to just go viral or not maybe viral, but what would you advise to people? What is it that you usually say or what is it that you would advise? Well, virality shouldn't, in my opinion, never be the goal. and because it's so difficult, for one, so difficult, if not near possible, and very few people do it to where they actually target a legitimate audience.

Because the types of things that go viral are highly universal concepts. So if they're highly universal, that doesn't mean that they, everything that you talk about from there on out will be relevant to them. So then they unfollow, don't respond, don't buy from you. You know, they come in and why people feel compelled to follow based on a single post, you know, without looking at the deeper content. I have no idea what causes people to do that. That's like a whole other interesting psychological thing because I've had lots of virality on Instagram,

very targeted virality. with my content. It worked very well until it didn't. I had one post that got me 17,000 followers. Oh, wow. I can't imagine. Yes, it was the worst thing that could have ever happened to my account. The worst thing.

Yeah. So because what happened after that is then when I started the rest of my content, posted. This particular post was very similar to other ones that had other content that I had done that had not gone viral, had just been kind of a good post, nothing crazy. But this particular one viral and it pulled a bunch of people in that didn't really care about me, my deeper content like all of that, they followed for their own reason. And then as new content came forward, they would unfollow. Well, if you start to have to end the way that the algorithm works

is it will serve it up to that new audience first. And if they don't respond in kind, then it starts to punish you. So it will very quickly backfire on you and can be very difficult to recover from. So I never, I don't believe in that. And I think that when you pick universal topics for the high top of funnel type of content, because that's growth content. My recommendation is always pick universal topics that resonate with your ICP. So for me, that is topics around retirement, freedom, options, lifestyle.

Those are the types of things that I know are going to resonate with my ICP. And so when I have that growth, it's going to be made up of a large amount of my ICP versus picking the topic. that is so random. You know, it just won't make any sense. I really like how you explain the topic of virality. And when I get DMs about it, I will send up specifically to this section to hear it. I think you said it perfectly, and I can only agree. Awesome, awesome.

And as you've been on LinkedIn for some time, what is it that helps you to keep showing up? Because, you know, it's time-consuming, you don't always feel like it, but, What is it that makes you to continue, to enjoy the journey, and when you feel down, to still show up? Sure. You know, I'm not going to, like, sugarcoat it. I've got bills to pay. And right now, that is my acquisition. Let's be honest.

Yeah. No, it's like, I have no problem talking about money. I have a healthy relationship with money. I have a healthy relationship with talking about money. And that is my number one reason for being there. That's primary. Secondary, and maybe even tied to it equally, is my desire to help other people make money and improve their likelihoods or improve advance their careers or advance their messages out in the world. So I have a mission and I have a personal philosophy that I truly believe that personal brands have the ability to,

to change the world. And because they are tied to our livelihoods. They're tied, they can be tied to our businesses, they tied to our careers, and to the things that are most important to us. So that's a major motivator for me to show up. Now, that is not to say that there are days where I get so mad and so annoyed

because of constant pages, game network laying, and things that don't make sense, and that I'm happy to show up and do the work, but when the goal post is constantly being moved, it makes me crazy. But I just remind myself of my goals and that sort of thing. But also at the same time,

I have a long-term plan that I love the organic acquisition because I love the creativity that comes with it, I love the community-building aspect of it. But for the growth of my business, I pull people off into, pull their email off. I have them, I want them on my list. I have strategies for monetization of, you know, acquisition, paid acquisition as well. So, you know, I know that there's light at the end of the tunnel, too, because there aren't times when I heal.

No, I don't, for me, that this is not the goal. I don't want to do this day in and day out for, ever and some people really like it but for me I have other plans now I think that's your content looks great because I feel like that's whether it's your copies because I've seen it I like the way you write it obviously in these days like when you see a lot of recycled content when you see especially a lot of content like when it comes to personal branding because I like that LinkedIn is full of people who focus on this. I can honestly say that yours stands out.

And I also like the type of the images that you post, whether it's like image of yourself or some design that you put there. So I hope that you continue. Just the quality content that stands out. It will be shame if it wasn't there. Thank you. No, if I put out content, it will forever always be mine. I do all my writing, all my design.

You know, I write the scripts from my videos. My husband, you know, he films them and edits them. But I will always have a hand on the creation of my content. I couldn't imagine passing that off. Actually, one of the things I enjoy the most about it is as an actual creator with an artistic and a design background, you know, it's what I do. So for me, that part of it oftentimes doesn't feel like work. Yeah, no, but that's something that I can completely.

completely related to because when I do post for myself, I feel like that this is the moment when I am creative, I enjoy it, I can do whatever I want that I feel like that I wouldn't want to enforce it either because in the end it's what I enjoy the most. It's something that I create and that represents me. So that's another great point that I agree with. Awesome. Awesome. And since you are experienced a personal branding person and everything we discussed, What are maybe some common mistakes that you see that people do on LinkedIn when it comes to branding? I'm sure there are many.

And I feel like that although people talk about it all the time, but from the professional like you, what is it that maybe you don't understand why people don't fix first or you would recommend them to focus on first? Yeah, the thing that I feel shows up a lot that I see in content that doesn't resonate or struggles that I see people having is, is that it's not always really very clear why they're doing what they're doing. You know, so what drives them, what motivates them, having that piece come first. And then the second piece is the positioning. That's kind of one of the most common problems that people don't understand is their positioning and what that needs and how that translates in their messaging.

And the reason why I can see that it's off is that the messaging just doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't resonate. Or the visual identity doesn't resonate with the message. So I think what happens with personal grants is that, you know, branding is, there's complexities to the nuance of it and how everything fits together. And there are reasons why there are branding agencies. There's reasons why it's an area of specialty. There's a reason for that is that it's a whole industry and sector. And you've got individuals who have no background in this coming in and trying to do something that really does require a lot of expertise

and know-how and understanding of human psychology, why we make these choices. And before you make a decision about what your banner looks like, And what you say on your banner, what's your positioning? Well, the other one that I see, and I don't know if it has so much to do with branding itself, but it does. It has to do with the strategies, the strategy piece of it, is people say, well, you know, I'm just going to experiment right now.

I'm just going to go out and whatever I want out there and kind of figure it out. And as much as I can respect and understand that, I did that a bit myself with my content. I wasn't experimenting with my audience, with my strategy, with my messaging, with my offer. That is not what I was experimenting with. I wasn't experimenting with any in that. That was all very well established before I went in. So that's where people get very confused and it becomes quite difficult to unring that bell. Once you kind of bumble out of the gate and if you do it for a very very confused,

very long time, it can be a lot of work quite expensive and time-consuming to undo that. I mean, to the point where people will even start accounts all over. They'll completely delete all their connections. Like in this instance of Instagram, they'll delete a profile and come back in. I think LinkedIn, I've heard of people doing that. I have someone I'm speaking with right now that she did that. whether or not like that's required I wouldn't necessarily

always say that that's the case but yeah that's that can be a challenge to not tap into the resources there's so many support resources out there to fill in your gaps in those areas like I wouldn't

experiment with my bookkeeping oh I think I'll just give this a whirl you know a go I'll give it a gift yeah you know I mean it's like it's so illogical. It's like so logical. Yeah, we're setting

up the strong foundations from the start or if you don't know. Don't be afraid to reach out to someone, right? Because speaking to someone or working with the professionals, it might help you to save a lot of time, money, a headache in the long run. Yeah, well, especially if you're using social media, like social selling or having a social

presence on a platform like LinkedIn, I could see experimentation. on a platform like Instagram, TikTok, like you want to play around, what have you, don't have a bowl in mind, you just want to put something out there and play, by all means, go do that. But if you are trying to align it to your business, that is not how you should do it. It definitely should be done much more strategically. And if you want to get comfortable being online, showing up, you know, that sort of thing, I get that you have to kind of cut your teeth on it, but there still should be strategy backs behind it.

That's my personal take on it. A lot of people say, no, just show up, do it, you know. For a big majority, it doesn't work out that great. That's the unfortunate part. Yeah, and I think that later on, you realize anyway that if you sorted out straight from the start, it would really help you. like, you know, you don't waste a long time trying to figure out. I mean, of course, when you fall, then learn from the mistakes.

It's the best way how to learn. But still, you might also waste a lot of time. And who knows, it might be quite demotivating as well. Yeah, yeah. Well, and you know, if you look at someone like Lara, her story is really interesting because she scrapped her whole social medias. She tore those, burn those down and started over. She started over not by hiring somebody to help her do it.

but here's what she was doing behind the scenes. It's just she did bring people in eventually, but she was 100% studying everything behind the scenes. She was doing all that work, reading everything, understanding psychology, doing a lot of the work that you could learn if you hired a brand strategist. You could collapse time in that way.

That's what she was doing. And a lot of people come in thinking that people are doing this in a vacuum and getting from point A to point B, you know, this fast trajectory in a vacuum. Those are outlier cases. That's not what, there's a billion people on the platform and there's a reason why there's only this two teeny tiny bit that are, there's a reason.

They're outlier. It's not the norm. Yeah. See, I didn't know that about Lara. So it's interesting, especially with someone so influential, such a big name and inspiration for so many people. So yeah, it's interesting. And as you say, there are so many people you see kind of on top or big names,

but at the same time there are so many like lower ones, not well-known ones or the ones that failed. So it's a great point to rest. You know, audience size does not equal healthy business. You can have a very small audience, 5,000, less, and still make incredible money. if it's curated correctly. And if you have an acquisition strategy, a nurturing strategy, you know, you're selling, all of that is tight and dialed in. That can be the case.

You don't have to have a large amount of followers. You know, I have done work with people that and had calls with people on the platform that have had 100,000, over 100,000 followers. but the audience was old and not responding, not buying. That's a whole other problem. So you can have all those followers. Doesn't mean they're going to buy at all. I think it's similar.

You can have big engagement on your post. And in the background, you may not know if the person is running several engagement pods and you look at the comments and it's what we discussed before. Summaries from AI comments. So it's a good point that you never know. So many engagement thoughts going on. And honestly, like I've noticed there's about three large creators that I had known to have grown their accounts very substantially organically, like absolutely legitimately.

The content read as much, the shares were appropriate, the number of comments. organic, all of that. And in the last few months, it's so obvious that they've joined a pod, which I don't even understand the why at this point. If they're, you know, 200,000 plus followers, what is the point? And you can tell because the type of content, the specific look and feel of their carousel. Being, you know, 4,000 comments and shared 275 times, like, come on. the format we know the formula and so you look at who's sharing it it's the same over and over

and you go to their accounts and all they do is repost other people's content it's like i don't know what to find any better yeah i think it's funny what you say because as you say there's like a pattern that you can see what the post looks like a type of comments a lot of reposts and it's like similar across all the others, which made me laugh about it's true. And I think it's unfortunate, not just because I feel like, oh, you're cheating your growth because I'm not in a competition for followers. I don't care about those things. I like it because I like the growth because it's part of what I help people do,

as well as I do think it's important. Constantly have new people coming into your audience because you can't sell to the same lukewarm audience. over and over, you can do very well for a while, but at some point you're going to, you're going to need to bring new people in. It doesn't mean you need to bring tens of thousands of people in. It just doesn't.

And this is why I don't care for it. And I feel like it's really detrimental to the platform and my growth and the quality of what happens to my posts and how they go out is that it's informing the algorithm. Even though LinkedIn says that it doesn't, and if they find out your potting, it's like, well, clearly, it can't detect it because they exist

these accounts are still you can say yeah so they're not shutting them down so clearly it's informing the algorithm and that's you know that's working and so for that reason I don't care for it because it's not just

they're gaming it for their own benefit they're gating it at the potential detriment of others and I think that's not that's not cool yeah I agree But, I mean, we could be discussing that for much longer, but just to respect your time, as we'll be finishing soon, I want to ask you a few kind of lighter questions at the end, which is what do you enjoy doing in your free time or what are some of your hobbies? Oh, sure.

My free time is chasing sunshine and water. That's what I really love. I love fishing. I love being on my boat. I love being at my, I have jungalo's in Florida on an island. I love being there and being near the water. And I spend my summers up in the mountains. And that to me, that's fun.

That's what I love. And I love cocktails with my friends. I love my playing with my dog. What's your dog's name? My dog's name is Junoog, but we call her Junie. That's good. I like it. She's amazing.

She's amazing. And hobbies, it's really interesting because I don't know that I have I may have hobbies but I don't know that I do because I tend to be very obsessed with a lot of the work that I do so I think my

if I have hobbies I feel like they're very interwoven into my work so I don't really think of them as hobbies I don't know if that makes any sense probably not that healthy there are probably people out there and say

girl hobbies But at the same time, understandably, you don't have time for everything because you run a business, you enjoy free time, as you just said, you grow your personal brand. And there's only so much that you can do in your life or in your date. Yeah, there is. I mean, I used to think that I do believe that there are more hours in the day than a lot of people leverage. I think that is true because people have asked me how you get so much done. how do you do all of this and it's because I make the most so Alana we discussed it already but can you summarize where people can find you follow you and promote any of your

services absolutely they can find me on LinkedIn I think I'm one of the only Alonis Farrow's on there and then Instagram my handle is Alana Sparrow and then of course my website alonisparro.com or the boundary site.com which is my business website. Yeah, that those would be places. And I will add everything to the show notes. And then before we finish, is there anything that I should have asked you and did

not or any final piece of advice or wisdom or anything that you would like to share? No, your interview was very thorough and I appreciate that. I would just say the final note would be if whether you're currently have a a personal brand or you're thinking about it, that this is how I kind of boil it down, is that just get very clear on where it is you want to go, so that's your goal, what it is you want to do, that's the offer that you bring to your client or you bring to a place that you work or that if you're getting voice to a cause that you're going to call there, and then who you want to do it for.

So that's your audience. And you can do that to grow your business, build a career, and give voice to a clause. And you put strategy behind that and you've got a personal grant. It's that simple. But get that foundation, right?

Do that. That's my advice. I like it. And I would only add, follow Alana for more if you want to know or get any inspiration. So I want to say a big thank you, Alana, I really enjoyed it. I, of course, feel like that we could be talking for much longer,

so we'd be happy to catch up any time in the future again. As I said, I encourage people to follow you and support you because I think your content is amazing. So thank you so much for your time, and I will keep following and supporting. So thank you very much. Thank you so much for having. Miavi, we appreciate it. And I'll be happy to come back to us. Thanks for listening to Prejudy by with Tomen. show notes for all the links and don't forget to subscribe like and share your feedback speak soon