Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Dr. Natalia Wiechowski: Elevate Your Personal Brand | E11
Episode Date: November 26, 2018What does your personal brand say about you? In today’s digital world, unless you have no social footprint at all, you have a personal brand— whether you like it or not. With 264 million people on... social media, it might seem like an impossible task to stand out from the crowd. However, we can take control of our image by being intentional about everything we do online, and by creating content that represents who we are or the expertise we bring to the table. In this episode, Hala sits with Dr. Natalia Wiechowski, personal branding strategist, LinkedIn unicorn and leading edutainer, to help us take our personal brands to the next level. Learn how to become an influencer online, why being authentic is the new perfect and the importance of storytelling as a content creator. For more on Dr. Natalia Wiechowski visit her website at https://thinknatalia.com/. Young and Profiting podcast is brought to you by audible. Get your FREE audiobook here: www.audibletrial.com/YAP Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on Instagram: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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                                         You are listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast,
                                         
                                         a place where you can listen, learn, and grow.
                                         
                                         I'm Halasaha, and today we're yapping
                                         
                                         about building a personal brand, becoming an influencer
                                         
                                         online, why being authentic is
                                         
                                         the new perfect, and the importance of storytelling as a content creator.
                                         
                                         For this episode, I've brought on expert Dr. Natalia Vihowsky, otherwise known as Think
                                         
                                         Natalia.
                                         
    
                                         She's absolutely mastered the art of personal branding, both online and offline.
                                         
                                         Natalia is the LinkedIn influencer keynote speaker and personal branding strategist
                                         
                                         who's got a doctorate in philosophy and is a leading edutainer in the Middle East.
                                         
                                         Hi Natalia thanks for joining us all the way from the United Arab Emirates.
                                         
                                         Thank you for your time and for this opportunity, Hala. Your top influencer on LinkedIn and one
                                         
                                         of the world's leading educators.
                                         
                                         And so you're the perfect person to talk to us about building a personal brand.
                                         
                                         So before we get started, I want to pay a little attention to you.
                                         
    
                                         You have a very unique background, a wide range of experiences.
                                         
                                         Can you tell us about your career journey and what you do today?
                                         
                                         Yes.
                                         
                                         So are you studying social science?
                                         
                                         When you do that, the job doesn't exist.
                                         
                                         So in comparison, for example, when you study engineering,
                                         
                                         you become an engineer, when you study medicine,
                                         
                                         you become a doctor.
                                         
    
                                         But what on earth do you do when you study social science?
                                         
                                         I started working in the UAE in a city called Alain.
                                         
                                         Once I finished my studies,
                                         
                                         and my first job was being a
                                         
                                         librarian. So I set up a library from scratch for vocation or training in secure
                                         
                                         for Emirati students. So I did this and after three and a half years I could either go back to Germany
                                         
                                         or I could also look for another job. And as I lived in a lane,
                                         
                                         and I did not explore to buy that much,
                                         
    
                                         I said, you know what, let's get me a job in Dubai,
                                         
                                         which I did.
                                         
                                         I ended up in the logistics industry
                                         
                                         and over there in the marketing slash sales department.
                                         
                                         So I did that for two and a half years
                                         
                                         and was at the highest level of my young career as people
                                         
                                         said and they were excited for me and they perceived me as successful, but I realized that
                                         
                                         I'm needed to successful.
                                         
    
                                         I'm not happy and my health was a disaster.
                                         
                                         So this is when I then quit my job, started to unlearn everything that I ever learned, went
                                         
                                         on sabbatical and failed myself up to my dream lifestyle, dream
                                         
                                         life in Korea, which is being a keynote speaker, a LinkedIn unicorn, and a personal branding
                                         
                                         strategy.
                                         
                                         Very cool.
                                         
                                         So you took a sabbatical.
                                         
                                         When do you recommend that people should consider doing that?
                                         
    
                                         Ask yourself, why do you want to do that sabbatical?
                                         
                                         How long will it be?
                                         
                                         How much money did you save up and then create an action plan?
                                         
                                         I think it really makes sense to go on a sabbatical
                                         
                                         when you need to do some big self-work,
                                         
                                         when you want to relearn certain things
                                         
                                         or you want to gain a specific skill
                                         
                                         or you want to spend more time in nature,
                                         
    
                                         you want to figure out who you truly are. But it's not that you just quit your job and you go and
                                         
                                         you travel the world and everything is amazing as you think it is and people portrayed on Instagram.
                                         
                                         No, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of commitment. It's a lot about saying no, it's about living
                                         
                                         a minimalist lifestyle. I mean, at least this is how it was for me and
                                         
                                         it is challenging but it can be the most powerful and profound and beautiful thing that you can
                                         
                                         gift yourself with. Yeah, definitely. So tell us how did you come to develop your own personal brand
                                         
                                         and how did you find out what you exactly wanted to do? I literally read everything that I've find about personal branding.
                                         
                                         And I found a handful of people that I identified as my role model
                                         
    
                                         spec then. I had a look at how they market themselves and how they create content
                                         
                                         and with whom they meet and what them warning habits are.
                                         
                                         And I understood very quickly that with all of these motivational speakers
                                         
                                         and all of these performance coaches out there say is the truth but 99% of people do not want
                                         
                                         to hear it and will not apply it and that's the difference between 99% of people out there
                                         
                                         and those people who made it or will make it. So I understood that now I have more of the theory. So now it's all about applying. So starting
                                         
                                         from April 2015 until today, I post it almost every day, sometimes I post it up to three
                                         
                                         times a day on certain social media platforms. And this is the magic or the hot souls or secret
                                         
    
                                         souls. So I really want to call it, it's all about consistency and experimenting and
                                         
                                         making mistakes and create content go out there and network and see where to stay.
                                         
                                         I came across one of your blogs on LinkedIn and found the way that you break down personal
                                         
                                         branding very helpful.
                                         
                                         You said there are four elements to it, Inside, outside, offline, and online.
                                         
                                         Can you talk us through each one? How much kind do I have? So I can talk about it for
                                         
                                         45 minutes, but I can't show it. So let's start on the inside. I think that you will only be able to
                                         
                                         design a great lifestyle and an outstanding career
                                         
    
                                         when you know your basics, when you understand who you are
                                         
                                         and what you do.
                                         
                                         Not from a spiritual point of view,
                                         
                                         let's be a little bit more hands-on pragmatic.
                                         
                                         So what are your values?
                                         
                                         What's important to you?
                                         
                                         How do you wanna be perceived?
                                         
                                         What are your personal targets?
                                         
    
                                         What are your career targets?
                                         
                                         How do you want to make people feel,
                                         
                                         et cetera, et cetera.
                                         
                                         That is a lot of insight work that needs to be done in the beginning.
                                         
                                         You also need to work on the way you think,
                                         
                                         because the way you think then manifests in the way how you speak
                                         
                                         and your words then manifest into actions.
                                         
                                         And this, in the end, all of these actions are your life.
                                         
    
                                         So you need to change the way
                                         
                                         you're thinking through what are we successful. So sometimes I refer my clients to performance
                                         
                                         of life coaches when I realize that the words that they say and the way how they speak about
                                         
                                         themselves or others is still full of hate or fear or anxiety because I'm not trained in this.
                                         
                                         I've done that on myself. I
                                         
                                         healed myself, I worked on this, but I worked with other coaches and mentors and
                                         
                                         shamans and healers and Buddhist monks and everything and it was a process of
                                         
                                         three years. So don't expect me to help you with that because it's really a tough
                                         
    
                                         cookie but it's doable with a specific expert. Then we have the outside thing. I believe that the societies that we created
                                         
                                         have tendency to be shallow and judgmental
                                         
                                         and obsessed with things like beauty and success
                                         
                                         and achievements.
                                         
                                         And to be also very honest,
                                         
                                         we reach out to book by its cover.
                                         
                                         So we also care about the way how we look.
                                         
                                         And the first thing, what we do when we see a new person
                                         
    
                                         is we scan them or her.
                                         
                                         So it makes sense to have a look at things
                                         
                                         like your body language, the way how you move, what you wear.
                                         
                                         If you are very, very young, then we might work with things
                                         
                                         that will make you a little bit older,
                                         
                                         at least the perception of other people.
                                         
                                         If you are old in quotation marks
                                         
                                         and you work in industry, that is really horribly judgmental
                                         
    
                                         and you have to fight with ageism,
                                         
                                         there are a few factors that we can work on
                                         
                                         to make you look and move and speak
                                         
                                         and be perceived younger.
                                         
                                         So these are factors in the outside box.
                                         
                                         Then we have the online work.
                                         
                                         Because I think that people go here, I mean, it doesn't matter if you go for a
                                         
                                         date or a job interview, people will always take a name, put it into the Google
                                         
    
                                         search box, hit enter, and you are what Google says about here. So it makes sense
                                         
                                         to have a clean online image or a clean online reputation. There is also
                                         
                                         manageable. These are things that you can work on and with the right content and the right
                                         
                                         features, you can definitely portray yourself in a way that is aligned with your
                                         
                                         values and with your long-term targets. Yeah, then offline is from
                                         
                                         even more the PR world. So have a look at your network because
                                         
                                         the world is full of human beings and it's all about connection.
                                         
                                         Have a look at the awards that you have or don't have.
                                         
    
                                         How do you show people that you do not only talk,
                                         
                                         but walk to talk?
                                         
                                         I mean, are you really an expert?
                                         
                                         How can we show people that there's really substance
                                         
                                         behind what you do?
                                         
                                         And if there's not, then you better start learning and you better start investing in courses and reading books and improving your speeches, etc.
                                         
                                         So you get to that expert level. You need to continuously invest not only in yourself, but also in your expertise to stay on top of the game.
                                         
                                         So these are some factors on the offline area where you could also work on it. I've heard people say before
                                         
    
                                         that personal branding is gimmicky or fake.
                                         
                                         What's your response to that?
                                         
                                         I don't understand how something can be fake
                                         
                                         that is based on your own values.
                                         
                                         Because personal branding, if done correctly,
                                         
                                         really asked you, how do you wanna live?
                                         
                                         How do you wanna help other people?
                                         
                                         How do you wanna change this world? What's your bigger picture? I mean, when you die one day, what do you want people to live? How do you want to help other people? How do you want to change this world? What's your
                                         
    
                                         bigger picture? I mean, when you die one day, what do you want people to say about you? And that is
                                         
                                         very individual. So that cannot be fake. I mean, you can be, please excuse my language and
                                         
                                         ask for, and you can have really shift your values and not care about human beings, but that still is not fake. So I think fake is a word that absolutely makes zero sense
                                         
                                         in the personal branding process
                                         
                                         because personal branding really starts
                                         
                                         with the real human being you are.
                                         
                                         Yeah, I totally agree.
                                         
                                         And to be honest, I think that you really have no choice.
                                         
    
                                         For the most part these days,
                                         
                                         unless you have no social footprint at all,
                                         
                                         you have a personal brand at all, you have
                                         
                                         a personal brand. Whether you like it or not, if people Google you, they'll find something
                                         
                                         and associate you with that content. So you need to be very intentional. You need to be
                                         
                                         very aware and everything you do either strengthens or weakens the personal brand that you're
                                         
                                         trying to create. Speaking of that, can you talk about the ways that people hurt their
                                         
                                         brand without even realizing it?
                                         
    
                                         Well, there are a few factors.
                                         
                                         Some people, they portray this fantastic and shiny and outstanding brand online, and
                                         
                                         then when you meet them in person, you think, wait, well, I actually wanted to meet
                                         
                                         zone, so who are you?
                                         
                                         So that doesn't make sense to create two different personas.
                                         
                                         We are online, and all of that needs to be the same person. So that's one way how you harm your personal brand. Then another
                                         
                                         thing that I've just mentioned about the trolls is no matter what you comment on on social media,
                                         
                                         can be read by everybody in your social network and in the social network of person posted it. So any comment or any post that you also share, and it might be on Facebook, can either
                                         
    
                                         add value and help you portraying a certain image that you have or can ruin you.
                                         
                                         Another thing is that I just recently read about which is super interesting.
                                         
                                         It comes from Germany's number one sales coach, his name is Delhoiter.
                                         
                                         So he said, you're not losing against competition.
                                         
                                         You're losing against the fact that people do not know you.
                                         
                                         So if you do not speak about yourself, if you do not go to networking events,
                                         
                                         if you do not create content, you are losing out on thousands of opportunities
                                         
                                         in business and in your private life, which is said, and I guess you are losing out on thousands of opportunities and business and in your private life,
                                         
    
                                         which is sad and I guess you're losing out
                                         
                                         that only on the opportunities, but also on money.
                                         
                                         So it's also way how you interact
                                         
                                         with the hard new personal brand,
                                         
                                         but just not saying anything
                                         
                                         and hoping for miracles to happen.
                                         
                                         So let's dig into that a little bit.
                                         
                                         You started getting into the benefits
                                         
    
                                         of personal branding.
                                         
                                         Our listeners are young professionals and one of the benefits of good personal branding for us would be
                                         
                                         being an attractive job candidate. According to a job bite survey of recruiters, 95% of recruiters
                                         
                                         view a competitive personal brand as an essential differentiator when searching for applicants.
                                         
                                         But with 264 million people out there on social media, it might seem like
                                         
                                         an impossible task to stand out from the crowd.
                                         
                                         Well, first of all, definitely polish your LinkedIn profile. Because a lot of people
                                         
                                         they either still don't have a LinkedIn profile or it looks ridiculously boring or not attractive at
                                         
    
                                         all. So first thing, once you decide it on having an up-to-date LinkedIn profile is
                                         
                                         go to a photographer and invest in a professional exposure. I do not want to see pictures of you and
                                         
                                         your dog or your best friend or you from a party or a passport picture. That's not how you create
                                         
                                         a first-pository impression. And it's Christmas very soon, so that might be an amazing gift that you
                                         
                                         can actually tell your friends or bestie your parents your partner whatever
                                         
                                         I want to photo shoot because I'm looking for a job or I'm looking for better business opportunities
                                         
                                         So that is definitely something worth doing another thing which might be a good idea is creating a very simple webpage
                                         
                                         It doesn't cost a fortune anymore. This is how you already stand up in three different ways.
                                         
    
                                         First of all, you have a LinkedIn profile.
                                         
                                         Second of all, you updated it and you have a great picture.
                                         
                                         Third of all, you have a webpage.
                                         
                                         So from this number, how many of them have a webpage,
                                         
                                         have a great picture, have a great LinkedIn profile.
                                         
                                         And if this number is still too big for you,
                                         
                                         then start creating content. And if this number is still too big for you, then start creating content.
                                         
                                         And if that number is still too big for you
                                         
    
                                         and you really want to be seen,
                                         
                                         create video content on LinkedIn.
                                         
                                         And now we're talking.
                                         
                                         Yeah, that will really help you stand out
                                         
                                         because not many people are doing that at all.
                                         
                                         I've also heard that people with a good personal brand
                                         
                                         earn more.
                                         
                                         Why is that?
                                         
    
                                         And do you have any tips for a look that demands more money?
                                         
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                                         I think as always, there are quite a few factors.
                                         
                                         So people with a great personal brand come from a mindset of self development and growth. So they will
                                         
                                         continuously invest in themselves, which means that they have the knowledge and they also have
                                         
                                         the experience, which is exactly what every employer wants to see because if you go into
                                         
                                         social or economic theories, this is human capital. This is the juicy stuff that will make you, you know, more productive,
                                         
    
                                         and that's where companies want to see. Then somebody who is a great personal brand, also in this,
                                         
                                         in the way how he actually moves and speaks, and is as a human being. So that person knows how to listen to people,
                                         
                                         and that person most probably starts to stay in a way that he or she's positive.
                                         
                                         So, the co-workers of that person would like that individual.
                                         
                                         That means this person also has positive vibes and through that the whole atmosphere around that person is also so much better.
                                         
                                         So, not only does that person have the hard skills, but also the soft skills to be an amazing individual.
                                         
                                         And in the end, companies are just a bunch of people and people who want to work with
                                         
                                         awesome people.
                                         
    
                                         And when you have that, and then you go out there and you deliver what you actually
                                         
                                         pull trite, of course, you should be paid in a higher and better way.
                                         
                                         At least if that company is somehow reasonable and if not,
                                         
                                         if you have all of these boxes,
                                         
                                         you can tick off all of these boxes that I just mentioned,
                                         
                                         then you should really start looking for a new job
                                         
                                         as somebody out there will appreciate
                                         
                                         what your current boss on player doesn't see.
                                         
    
                                         As far as content goes,
                                         
                                         is it possible to have a brand without any content
                                         
                                         or do you kind of need both in order to succeed?
                                         
                                         If you fully focus on the offline world, so if you fully focus on networking, on delivering
                                         
                                         speeches, on shaking hands, on writing books, and you do that in such an amazing way, and
                                         
                                         you also tell people, oh, by the way, if you like it, you know, share it on social media,
                                         
                                         then theoretically, you could allow your whole network and the people that you know to do that work for you.
                                         
                                         But at a certain stage, people will be dying, they will be crazy to hear something from you.
                                         
    
                                         And when you don't read content, you're missing out on tons of opportunities,
                                         
                                         leads, sales opportunities, meeting fantastic people, friends, mentors,
                                         
                                         just to let the world know about you.
                                         
                                         I think it's a little bit as if you just say no to a huge part of opportunities.
                                         
                                         So I would always, always, always encourage people to create content because
                                         
                                         it's fun. And yeah, you just at least double the amount of greatness that can enter your life.
                                         
                                         And I mentioned this earlier, you have a very popular LinkedIn page. What's your advice on growing
                                         
                                         and online community? How many channels should we start out with, how do we define our target audience?
                                         
    
                                         I would start with one,
                                         
                                         because everything else is just overwhelming and chaotic,
                                         
                                         and if you want to master one social media platform,
                                         
                                         that takes time, and experimenting, et cetera, et cetera.
                                         
                                         Especially when you do that on your own.
                                         
                                         I highly assume that your audience is not in a position
                                         
                                         where that person can hire a personal assistant or a virtual assistant or a social media assistant.
                                         
                                         So I assume that you do that on your own. So I would literally start with one platform and if it
                                         
    
                                         is your professional career, it's definitely linked in. So that's the first thing to do.
                                         
                                         When it comes to the online community,
                                         
                                         I think a lot of people put that term on a pedestal
                                         
                                         and we need to go once again deeper and say,
                                         
                                         what is a community?
                                         
                                         And then we realize create a community.
                                         
                                         It's a bunch of people.
                                         
                                         And if we reduce the bunch, we just have people.
                                         
    
                                         And people, you're a person as well.
                                         
                                         So once again, put yourself into shoes
                                         
                                         of these individuals and ask yourself,
                                         
                                         what should I do to add value to help others to make them think of smile? And Austin, and give them exactly that and ask them to give you some feedback and share their thoughts.
                                         
                                         And when they do that, get back to them, show them that you've read that and start a conversation, start a dialogue,
                                         
                                         start a create content that is a platform
                                         
                                         or a place where people go to think,
                                         
                                         to talk with people, meet each other,
                                         
    
                                         so that you're basically a networking place
                                         
                                         and a place of inspiration, I think that's important.
                                         
                                         And when it comes to your third question about the target audience,
                                         
                                         that really depends on your long-term targets.
                                         
                                         So if you are a public speaker and a coach,
                                         
                                         who are the clients that you want to work with, sit down and identify the person,
                                         
                                         and then write and speak in a way on social media that these people resonate with?
                                         
                                         Yeah, that's great advice.
                                         
    
                                         As I was prepping for this show, I was scanning articles about personal
                                         
                                         branding on the internet. And I saw that many people are saying that millennials naturally excel at
                                         
                                         personal branding. But I'm not sure I entirely buy that because I personally know a lot of millennials
                                         
                                         who are struggling in this area. Some of them are introverts. Some of them just don't have the
                                         
                                         marketing skills to
                                         
                                         develop videos or write well. Do you have any advice for those type of people? What do you do if you're not
                                         
                                         naturally a person who likes to put themselves out there or if you don't think you're great at creating
                                         
                                         content? I think first of all you need to get clear on your why. It's cheesy as the sounds and
                                         
    
                                         that's awesome as you folks of you read it somewhere. Ask
                                         
                                         yourself why it's so important that you get yourself out of this comfort zone. What do you want to
                                         
                                         achieve with that? So when you create content or when you get yourself out there, why do you do that
                                         
                                         to get a job, to get a better job, to find friends who really respect and love you and will get you
                                         
                                         to the next level. If you create content or if you do everything
                                         
                                         and we just talk about because others do it, you're not going to succeed because your reason is not deep enough and
                                         
                                         you know you have a bad day or you feel sick or whatever and you will stop doing it. So you first of all you need something
                                         
                                         that will really motivate you and pull you towards achieving
                                         
    
                                         this goal. That's the first thing.
                                         
                                         And everything else is just very basic training. So, for example, if you want to do videos,
                                         
                                         then I guess the problem lies in two areas. The first thing is that you don't know how to technically do it. So go into the internet and read three,
                                         
                                         four, five articles on how do I film on videos using a smartphone or which YouTube tutorials.
                                         
                                         And the second thing is training public speaking skills. And for that, I have started with
                                         
                                         Toastmasters International, the world's biggest nonprofit organization when it comes to public
                                         
                                         speaking. So go there twice a month and force yourself to write down your
                                         
                                         thoughts, to become a better speaker, to use body language, to use more interesting stories,
                                         
    
                                         how to become a better storyteller, et cetera, et cetera. So I think these would be the first
                                         
                                         elements that you could start investing in when you want to become a better content creator or get yourself out there.
                                         
                                         There's two things I want to touch upon that you've mentioned so far.
                                         
                                         So one of them is the importance of authenticity and being genuine,
                                         
                                         and the second one is the importance of storytelling.
                                         
                                         Can you talk through why those items are important to consider when developing your personal brand? I think authenticity is something that more and more people are
                                         
                                         craving for because if you flip through your Instagram, I don't know how
                                         
                                         yours looks like, but mine is full of overly photoshop and overly
                                         
    
                                         staged scenarios or people who I know borrowed that car or borrowed that dress. So the way
                                         
                                         social media evolved over the last years, unfortunately there is a lot of dragging and a lot
                                         
                                         of staging going on in a way that people compare each other's lifestyle all the time in
                                         
                                         the soul about who, look at me, look at at whatever I achieve. So we know that this is staged because life has ups and downs and very often
                                         
                                         we also see that person on Instagram, we meet him or her in person and we know that that's
                                         
                                         BS. That's absolutely not possible. So when you come from a place of authenticity and say,
                                         
                                         I'm going to show you what really I'm,
                                         
                                         and what I'm really working on, and you decide how far you go,
                                         
    
                                         that makes it interesting.
                                         
                                         And it makes it so much more relatable,
                                         
                                         and it makes it so much more human.
                                         
                                         And we all know how much stress we go through,
                                         
                                         and anxiety, and sometimes jealousy, and brainwash,
                                         
                                         through social media, through advertising, through movies, through newspapers,
                                         
                                         all of this, that's just exhausting.
                                         
                                         So when somebody says, no, to all of that,
                                         
    
                                         and says, I'll give my best to really show you
                                         
                                         who I am and what I do, I think that makes you stand out.
                                         
                                         And that is a great foundation for true
                                         
                                         genuine connections and relationships.
                                         
                                         Yeah and I think it takes a certain amount of confidence to be able to just let
                                         
                                         yourself have your natural style and let yourself not worry about being totally perfect or
                                         
                                         not stumbling or not looking totally amazing that day.
                                         
                                         That's something I personally struggle with
                                         
    
                                         because I always wanna be like perfect online.
                                         
                                         It takes time and the older you get,
                                         
                                         the less you give it, that's fun.
                                         
                                         So this is when anybody out there is like,
                                         
                                         oh my God, I don't wanna get old, I don't wanna grow up.
                                         
                                         It's so much better.
                                         
                                         Like with every year, with every profound
                                         
                                         experience we have, the less you really care about other people and the more you care about
                                         
    
                                         doing what excites you, making a difference and helping those ones who are willing to listen
                                         
                                         or want your help. And this is what really matters. Not the opinion of somebody who lives 3,000 kilometers away who doesn't get his own
                                         
                                         shit or life sorted out. Who are they to judge you? So, impatient with yourself and daily work
                                         
                                         on yourself and eventually you're going to get it. It's not that I was the way how I am today since,
                                         
                                         I don't know, day one. I mean, I also had a lot of insecurities and of course I still have some insecurities. I mean, like, I didn't have insecurities that wouldn't
                                         
                                         be living how I live right now. I think we live life how we do it because there are certain
                                         
                                         fears and insecurities that we are not willing to let go yet and life will give you a lot
                                         
                                         of opportunities to face them and you will only grow and evolve to the next
                                         
    
                                         level when you actually say yes to growth and yes to facing that fear.
                                         
                                         You often talk about the importance of storytelling.
                                         
                                         I mentioned it in a lot of your videos and things like that.
                                         
                                         I was hoping that you could explain what you exactly mean by that to our listeners. Storytelling is for me an elegant way
                                         
                                         of packaging a message.
                                         
                                         So there are people out there who post content on LinkedIn
                                         
                                         that is literally a one-liner and that is just a message.
                                         
                                         So a message could be be you,
                                         
    
                                         or another message could be never give up,
                                         
                                         or another message could be personal branding give up, or another message could be, personal branding
                                         
                                         can help you living a better life.
                                         
                                         These are the messages.
                                         
                                         So when I post stuff like this,
                                         
                                         I would not expect anybody to like that,
                                         
                                         which comments or engage with that,
                                         
                                         because that's, I mean, everyone can do that.
                                         
    
                                         Like, you can open a newspaper or book
                                         
                                         or just open any social media page, copy and paste.
                                         
                                         Like, what's the idea behind it?
                                         
                                         I heard that before.
                                         
                                         It's boring.
                                         
                                         It's lame.
                                         
                                         So, if you want to share your lessons learned or your message and you want to do that in
                                         
                                         a compelling way and you want people's attention, you need to make an interest somehow.
                                         
    
                                         And this is then when you tell stories around your message.
                                         
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                                         So I give you an example.
                                         
    
                                         That was one post that I had two years ago.
                                         
                                         So basically, the message was, every day has the opportunity to become the best day of
                                         
                                         your life, right?
                                         
                                         So that was the idea.
                                         
                                         But if I would have posted that, it would be just a motivational post that you have read
                                         
                                         as quickly in time.
                                         
                                         So what I did instead, as I told you, small story around it.
                                         
                                         And this story is actually true.
                                         
    
                                         Like not all of the stories that you tell me to be true, you always decide how far you go, etc. But the one that I shared was true.
                                         
                                         So my story was at the end of the year, I was very busy, I was in rush, and I wanted to leave
                                         
                                         my flat, but I realized, oh, I'm not wearing furfumes, so I grabbed my perfume and my stock
                                         
                                         at crowns in the second when I grabbed that perfume perfume because I have two perfumes and I have a
                                         
                                         normal one and one for special occasions. Occidentally, I grabbed the one for special occasions but it was
                                         
                                         not a special day. And I realized, wow, something is really wrong here. And it was as if somebody slapped me in
                                         
                                         the face because I finally understood, wow, it's the end of the year. This is my
                                         
                                         special occasion perfume. I have never ever used it for the last 350 part days or so. That
                                         
    
                                         means my whole year is average. Nothing special. Who says that something is special? And that's
                                         
                                         just like I don't want to live like this. So I throw away my everyday perfume, and I just use one perfume nowadays,
                                         
                                         which is the special occasion perfume,
                                         
                                         because I make the actual decision every day
                                         
                                         that today's going to be a special day.
                                         
                                         So that's an example of powerful storytelling.
                                         
                                         The people will love, resonate with, repost,
                                         
                                         and ask for telephone calls, emails, et cetera.
                                         
    
                                         And that goes back to being genuine and being authentic.
                                         
                                         It's just tell people the real, you, real things
                                         
                                         that happen to you, let them emotionally connect.
                                         
                                         I think that makes total sense.
                                         
                                         So something that I've realized over the years
                                         
                                         as I've expanded on different entrepreneurial adventures
                                         
                                         is that when you're launching something
                                         
                                         like your own personal brand or your own content,
                                         
    
                                         I find that it's mostly strangers that support you. So online strangers, co-workers that not
                                         
                                         that close with, these are the people that are most likely to support you in the beginning.
                                         
                                         Even with my podcast, I get thousands of listeners, but I have best friends who still haven't
                                         
                                         listened to the show, and it can make you feel bad. So can you talk about why is it that it's strangers that are most likely to support you in these
                                         
                                         type of endeavors and how you cannot take it so personally if your friends and family aren't
                                         
                                         really the ones who are supporting you the hardest?
                                         
                                         That's an interesting observation. So I would assume that the content that you create is not relevant to your friends and your
                                         
                                         family, etc. I mean, in the end, all the things that we create on social media, the podcasts
                                         
    
                                         that we have, the blog that we have, it's a nice hobby, if that's a hobby for you, but
                                         
                                         in the majority of cases, the people that I work with, it is a lead magnet, which means it's historically connected to your business.
                                         
                                         And business and family and friends of two different worlds, depending on, of course,
                                         
                                         in which society you live in, I know that in the US, it's a little bit more into mixed
                                         
                                         or into point.
                                         
                                         While in Germany, there's a very strict way, like it's A and B, and you give your best
                                         
                                         to not mix it.
                                         
                                         So that could be one reason.
                                         
    
                                         Another reason could also be that your friends might be jealous
                                         
                                         or your friends might wish that they have
                                         
                                         to encourage through that as well, but they don't.
                                         
                                         So yeah, I know of many cases in which people just didn't say
                                         
                                         anything to their friends or their families and they just did it.
                                         
                                         And then once they had their first million, you know, they spend a lot of time around. Exactly. You know, by the way, that's me in my
                                         
                                         real car, you know, just show up in front of your parents' house with this brand new car, or you
                                         
                                         invite your parents and your best friends to a one week trip to somewhere and say, by the way,
                                         
    
                                         that's made for my first million. So then you don't have this whole conversation from the beginning. It's totally up to you.
                                         
                                         And in general, taking things personally
                                         
                                         won't get you far in life anyway.
                                         
                                         So meditation and mindfulness are two
                                         
                                         very, very great practices that I would recommend
                                         
                                         everybody to do.
                                         
                                         And this is nothing religious,
                                         
                                         and it's nothing airy fairy.
                                         
    
                                         And you don't need to have a beard or long hair.
                                         
                                         I'm going to eat your armpits to do that.
                                         
                                         You can be a cool, awesome human being and meditate.
                                         
                                         And there are a lot of outstanding, great minds
                                         
                                         and singers and actors and business people out there
                                         
                                         who practice mindfulness every day,
                                         
                                         who practice meditation every day.
                                         
                                         And through that, get more things done,
                                         
    
                                         and live a more balanced life,
                                         
                                         are less sick and live longer.
                                         
                                         So these are things that I think are pretty powerful
                                         
                                         to consider.
                                         
                                         Personally, I've just chosen to accept
                                         
                                         that friends and family are not gonna be my target audience
                                         
                                         and that I'm gonna go ahead and find people who are interested in the type of content that I provide and focus on that.
                                         
                                         And I think that accepting that and not feeling like anybody owes you anything in any regard
                                         
    
                                         as far as supporting you, they'll come along on their own.
                                         
                                         And it's just a matter of proving yourself to the world.
                                         
                                         And some people just can't imagine that you've grown so much or they only remember you
                                         
                                         in a past light and so I just think it's important
                                         
                                         to know yourself, know what you want
                                         
                                         and kind of zone out everything else
                                         
                                         that goes against your goals.
                                         
                                         So let's end the show with a popular American game
                                         
    
                                         called Would You Rather?
                                         
                                         Have you ever heard of that game before?
                                         
                                         Just the name, is it like, would you choose A or B?
                                         
                                         Yeah, something similar to that.
                                         
                                         It's something that like young girls
                                         
                                         in America play at sleepovers.
                                         
                                         I got it.
                                         
                                         Okay.
                                         
    
                                         Would you rather have no online presence at all
                                         
                                         or an embarrassing online presence?
                                         
                                         So having no online presence means no relevant results
                                         
                                         come up when you're Googled.
                                         
                                         And an embarrassing online presence
                                         
                                         could be your Facebook page popping up
                                         
                                         with highlights of your wildest college nights. I would go for A, not having an online presence could be your Facebook page popping up with highlights of your wildest college nights. I would go for a not having an online presence at all, which is so
                                         
                                         much easier at least for me to start from scratch and do something awesome instead of going
                                         
    
                                         in there and cleaning up all of the mess and asking people to delete creatures and then contact web pages.
                                         
                                         And, you know, it's like a second mirror.
                                         
                                         Once broken, you can still glue it together
                                         
                                         but you'll still see where it's cracked.
                                         
                                         So, no, not for me.
                                         
                                         So, before we go, I'd like you to take an opportunity
                                         
                                         to tell our listeners where they can go
                                         
                                         to find out more about you, think Natalia,
                                         
    
                                         and everything else that you do.
                                         
                                         Yes, sure. So So if you like reading, then check out my blog thinknatalia.com.
                                         
                                         If you want to know how to buy looks line, how I live my life, then have a look at my
                                         
                                         Instagram, which is at think Natalia. If you're interested in daily posts or videos around personal branding,
                                         
                                         business hacks and stories out of my business environment, then LinkedIn is definitely a good option.
                                         
                                         And if you want to improve your personal brand, because you're either looking for a job or you're
                                         
                                         looking for more leads, I have recently launched two really awesome and
                                         
                                         fun online courses. You will find more information about that also on my webpage and blog thinkinatario.com.
                                         
    
                                         Awesome. Well, this was so helpful and I'm so thankful that you were able to come on the show
                                         
                                         with us today. I'm really glad to hear that. It was a lot of fun. Thank you for giving me this
                                         
                                         space and the opportunity and great questions.
                                         
                                         Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast.
                                         
                                         Follow Yap on Instagram at Young and Profiting and check us out at Young and Profiting.com.
                                         
                                         And now you can chat live with us every single day on our new Slack channel.
                                         
                                         Check out our show notes or Young and Profiting.com for the link.
                                         
                                         You can find me on Instagram at Yap withHala or LinkedIn, just search for a name.
                                         
    
                                         Hala Taha.
                                         
                                         Big thanks to the Yapp team, Tim, Danny Steves, Christian, Stephanie, Kayla, and Ryan.
                                         
                                         And an extra special shout out to our newest team member, Nicholas Robles.
                                         
                                         Until next time, this is Hala, signing off.
                                         
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