Andrew and Pete became best friends 15 years ago at uni, and have never held a job beyond running their own business together. How did they quickly build to the point where, in under a decade, they’d spoken on huge international stages, amassed a community of thousands, and created one of the largest conferences in the UK?

Well, you'll hear it from them, but a huge part of it is sheer gumption. They talk about how they made big asks, swung for the fences, and leveraged other people's kindness in the best possible ways. And of course, the way they received that kindness was by showing up with value first.

We’ll also hear about how they went from highly-paid speaking events and growing their global community to now hosting one of the UK's largest conferences for small businesses, ATOMICON.

(ATOMICON25 has now passed, but you can grab your early-bird ticket NOW for ATOMICON26! Use my affiliate link and I’ll buy you a drink in Newcastle…)

In this episode:

• “...that very first moment where I walked into the kitchen and Andrew is putting away his Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in the cupboard…”
• First business (motivational texts!)
• Branding agency
• “We'd throw chocolate across the room and we'd do little fun presentations and poems and wraps, and we'd do like, you know, some silly things to get attention.”
• From local networking meetings to speaking at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego.
• Big Domino Theory
• “We stalked those 10 people religiously for about two or three weeks..”
• Organizing their first big conference (online)
• “We were just gutsy. We had nothing to lose when we were 24 of putting ourselves out there.”
• Growing the Atomic community
• Focusing on doing one thing really remarkably at a time
• Launching Atomicon…with an expectation of 80 people
• Being really deliberate about putting on the best event possible, and never getting complacent
• Their current growth plan for the foreseeable future
• What lights Andrew up
• What lights Pete up
• What people get out of Atomicon beyond what’s on the tin
• Moving from a personal brand to a brand-brand

Find Andrew and Pete:

ATOMICON26 (affiliate link)

Atomic

Instagram

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anytime there's an update to Facebook (or even a rumored feature!), thousands hightail it to Mari Smith's profiles to see what she has to say about it.

But how did Mari establish such authority in the world of Meta marketing? How did she build her name professionally to become “the” Facebook guru? Why was Facebook the platform she chose to build her career on?

What did she do before Facebook⏤and what might she do after?

As with all good, aligned personal brands, the same motivating forces have guided Mari throughout her journey. Primary among those forces is her fascination with human relationships.

Relationships got her to the United States to begin with. Relationships enabled her to explore a variety of career paths. Relationships have always been the core of her interest in Facebook; she does love tech, but the thing that has always fascinated her most about Facebook is its power as a connection tool.

But as you'll hear, Mari's also looking more at the impact of social media on mental health, relationships, and society⏤for better and for worse.

This is definitely an interview that you have not heard Mari give before. We delve into her personal story, her varied professional background, and her unfiltered takes on Meta, marketing, and what’s next.

In this episode:

• Leaving Scotland for San Diego (with no money or job)
• Saved by the Cake!
• Bartering for legal help
• “From cakes to lawyers to a mobile disc jockey…”
• SEO Master
• “My love and my tech”
• “Mari, you, you can't be Miss Email Marketing, technology, internet and relationships⏤you gotta pick a lane!”
• Discovering Facebook
• Her first Facebook Marketing for Professionals course
• The power of early Facebook networking (and the DMs!)
• “I just love to teach and to explain!”
• Human Design and 10-year cycles
• “I'm going all in with this.”
• Mike Stelzner and Social Media Marketing World
• Why Mari has remained focus on organic social media
• Facebook vs. other platforms
• Mari’s current career transition
• “Mental wellness, mental health, and specifically, ironically, social media's impact and isolation and loneliness and depression…”
• “I just know how to market!”
• What has driven Mari in all phases of her life and career
• Why people trust her
• The public, the personal, and the private

Find Mari:

Website

Facebook

Instagram

Mari Smith’s Superstars community

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today I'm talking to a fellow personal branding person (which means so many different things to so many different people!): Sophie Lee, founder of Electric Peach!

Sophie doesn't just want to help people who are interested in making money. She’s putting the powerful brand storytelling tools she’s learned how to leverage over her career into the hands of people who are trying to change the world for the better: mission-driven, impact-driven businesses and female founders with something to say.

(She is also a fellow disco-ball-loving, collaboration-not-competition, sparkly badass; you can see why we get along!) ❤️

One of the themes we discuss over and over in this episode is about what it means to use one's voice. Sophie is all about empowerment of people's voices, specifically people who want to make positive changes in the world, and helping them harness the power of communication to do just that. Hearing Sophie’s journey makes it clear not only that she really knows her stuff, but also that she’s finely honed her personal values, her sense of self, and her own commitment to using these tools for good.

In this episode:

• Teaching English to the Czech government
• Joining the Disney “cult” in Shanghai
• “Journalism” in China
• The UK press’s misery machine
• Accidentally becoming a marketer
• The entrepreneurial bug
• A toxic relationship, and a new business partnership
• Becoming known for UGC (user-generated content)
• Building The Joyful for actual purpose-driven businesses
• Becoming Sophie Lee and Electric Peach
• Communication instead of polarization
• Empowering people to communicate their messages with passion and clarity
• What Sophie shares

Find Sophie:

Instagram

LinkedIn

Electric Peach

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I’ve known Amanda Webb of Spider Working for years. While she started as a digital marketing generalist, Amanda has really built her name for data and analytics in recent years, especially Google Analytics (for which she is a certified trainer with Enterprise Nation).

But, like many of us, Amanda didn’t start out in marketing, and she shares how her time in the film industry and a small business owner helped her build the tenacity and skills that eventually helped her launch her own successful consulting and speaking business, becoming globally known as an expert on how to make sense of analytics and succeed with data-driven marketing strategies.

Of course, we also discuss what lights Amanda up, what she truly delivers beyond just marketing insights, and what cats have to do with any of it (spoiler alert: not much, and she likes it that way!).

In this episode:

• “That's me: I am going to be the next Mike Lee!”
• Hustling to get those union tickets signed (including in the pubs)
• The importance of persistence
• “Let's face it…I'm never going to be the female Mike Lee.”
• “I know! I'll start a business!”
• Death of a Saleswoman
• “You’re not coming up on Google…”
• Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging
• An opportunity in recession
• “I was everywhere”
• Getting more widely known via video
• Irish Blog Awards
• Agorapulse, Social Media Marketing World, Meta and Google (via Enterprise Nation)
• Helping people feel clever
• Cats, knitting, film, and boundaries

Find Amanda:

• LinkedIn
• Website
• That Analytics Podcast
• That Analytics Show

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to theLet's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is The Queen Bee herself, Ms. Dani Wallace!

Dani is a speaking coach who runs the I Am The Queen Bee community and The Big Festoon event.

She delivers confidence. She delivers encouragement. She delivers badassery. But what she truly delivers, at the root of all she does, is to deliver the message that success can feel safe.

Her event, The Big Festoon, certainly does that. Her community does that. She's even got a documentary film, “The Festoon Effect,” about what she does and the message she's spreading.

Dani definitely comes across as someone who is fully confident in the value of her own message and in her own authority to do what she's doing out here–but, as you'll hear, she's just like the rest of us deep down. She experiences self-doubt and energetic crashes. But she also recognizes the importance of the message she’s here on this earth to deliver, and the empowerment the sense of community she creates brings to others.

In this episode:

• The council estates of Preston
• Traveling the world as a performer
• Call center training
• Domestic abuse and homelessness with two children under the age of two
• “Life is either going to continue happening to me or I'm going to happen to life.“
• Gigging singer to early live-streamer (and mascara seller!)
• “Show up, wise up, rise up”
• Safety in success
• Sharing her learnings
• An “overnight success” 10 years in the making
• Overcoming daily self-doubt
• Creating what she needed most via The Big Festoon
• “I’m really famous…”
• Fly Anyway Foundation
• Collaborations
• Releasing her own film
• Smashing the patriarchy
• Telling your story while bringing actual value to the world
• Creating that “joy space” that helps cement actual learning
• Owning her origin story without leaning on it
• The one thing about Dani’s energy you’d never guess!

Find Dani:

Instagram

“The Festoon Effect” documentary

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I started the season back in September with a solo episode⏤and I realized I didn't really give you as much of the goods as I really should have.

I did tell my professional story, I went through all of that history, and I even answered my own “searching” personal branding questions about my “why.”

What I didn't do is really get into the nitty-gritty of how I built my professional presence.

So we're going to take a walk down memory lane as to how I grew my own personal brand visibility, and hopefully some of these tactics can help you build yours as well.

In this episode:

• The beginning of Christine Gritmon Inc. in May 2016
• “Be visible doing the thing that you want to be known for doing”
• “Say yes to opportunities!”
• How I pivoted my personal brand
• “People who knew, liked and trusted me were up for coming along on this new journey because I focused on transferable skills and transferable values.”
• Deciding who I was going to learn from
• Networking before, during, and after events
• “Don't think that speakers are these untouchable people who are on this whole other plane of existence from yourself. Go talk to them!”
• “A slightly outdated tactic: I live-Tweeted events…”
• Becoming a conduit to information.
• Put yourself in the conversation and connect with others who are also part of that conversation
• Rebranding (again!) to personal branding
• “Take a look periodically at making sure everything is aligned” the things that you're offering, the audience you're offering it to, the audience you have, the things that you are doing. Make sure that it's all pointing in the same direction.”
• “What worked in the US isn't going to work here…”
• “Don't be afraid to realign, but make sure that you have something built on the fundamentals, the foundations that people have come to know you and trust you for, those transferable skills.”
• “Don't be afraid to show up.”

Find Me:

Website

LinkedIn

Instagram

Facebook

YouTube

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The word “empowerment” comes up a lot in this interview with online business-building coach Teresa Heath-Wareing! Teresa is all about empowering people, including herself, to live the lives they want to lead via building their online businesses.

I've known Teresa for a long time, and her messaging has been remarkably consistent over the years. We discuss how she built her business up to the level of reputation and success she enjoys now, how she chooses where to place her energy, and her constant commitment to bringing excellence to everyone she encounters. We also discuss her decision to release a more personal podcast earlier this year and how she decides what she does and doesn’t share as part of both her personal and business lives.

In this episode:

• Teresa’s first personal brand as an employee
• “I basically started from fear and having my back up against the wall and knowing I need to make money…”
• “They sort of borderline stalked you!”
• What made people buy in to Teresa in the early days
• Learning from the experts
• Getting clients from speaking…then not getting clients from speaking
• Saying yes to opportunities
• “...doing the small stuff and working your way up to it”
• The Hustle: gift bags, selfies, and flying 5,000 miles for coffee
• Choosing what opportunities to say yes or no to
• Why marketing?
• Delivering empowerment
• Her sobriety journey and “Losing Parts Of Myself” podcast
• What she will and won’t share

Find Teresa:

Instagram

LinkedIn

teresaheathwareing.com

Your Dream Business podcast

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You know I love having a chance to speak with non-marketers!

(Then again, is there truly such a thing in the world of personal branding?)

Ophira Edut has held many titles: teenage streetwear creator, artist, writer, graphic designer, web developer, magazine editor, feminist anthologist, author, and globally-acclaimed astrologer, just to name a few. We discuss her organic journey between all of these worlds, her motivations, key moments of recognition, and of course the companionship of her identical twin sister, Tali, with whom Ophira shared almost all of these adventures.

The biggest message of Ophira's story is: do what you do, put your creativity out there into the world–and if opportunities arise from it, say YES to them!

Hear about:

• Growing up an identical twin in a Middle Eastern family in the Midwest
• Winning allllllllll the contests
• Denim Rebellion and Double Vision
• (and Urban Outfitters and Raven-Symoné)
• Getting “Sassy” in NYC
• Hues Magazine
• Back to NY & getting online
• Astrology as personal insight…
• …and personal brand…
• …and science.
• Gloria Steinem!
• Ms. Magazine
• “Adios, Barbie”
• Teen Vogue and the birth of the AstroTwins brand
• “Astro Style”
• Astrology as a conduit for connection
• AstroStyle.com
• Syndication
• Elle Magazine
• Why Beyonce and Jay Z are still together (it was in the stars!)
• Bringing individual skills to a joint brand
• Tapping into commonalities
• Providing hope and guidance

Find Ophira:

Astrostyle.com

“The Astrology Advantage”

Instagram

TikTok

❤️

Get Started on Your Personal Brand Journey with a sampling of Christine's Personal Branding Questions here: https://www.gritmon.com/talkaboutmybrand

Subscribe to the Let's Talk About Brand Newsletter that goes out weekly to ensure you don't miss a beat!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.