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How to build your personal brand with Aliza Licht
229 Plays2 years ago
This was a really special episode. I interviewed Aliza Licht. Aliza is a best-selling author, the former SPV of DKNY and the creative brain behind the infamous twitter handle @DKNYPRGIRL. (RIP!)
We talked about her best-selling new book, On Brand: Shape Your Narrative. Share Your Vision. Shift Their Perception. One of the juiciest parts of the convo: How personal branding is different for men vs women.
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Follow Meredith on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Aliza
- on Insta https://www.instagram.com/alizalichtxo/?hl=en
- on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/alizalicht/
- her podcast https://alizalicht.com/podcast
And check out her previous book, Leave Your Mark https://www.amazon.com/Leave-Your-Mark-Career-Social-ebook/dp/B00NERQSHA/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1689651019&sr=1-2
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Transcript
Introduction to the Host and Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Hi and welcome to Content People. I'm your host Meredith Farley. I'm a former chief product officer turned chief operating officer turned CEO and founder. My agency is called Medbury. At Medbury we work with founders, execs, and companies who want to tell their stories and grow. But Content People is not about me or Medbury, it's about the creative leaders and professionals that we interview every week.
00:00:28
Speaker
We'll delve into their journeys, unpack their insights, and ask them for practical advice. If you like it, please rate and subscribe. I really hope that you enjoy. Let's get started.
Guest Introduction and Accomplishments
00:00:39
Speaker
Susan, thank you so much. I'm really, really excited to get to chat with you.
00:00:44
Speaker
And Lisa, I am so glad to have you on. Thank you so much. You have done so many things and achieved so much. I almost didn't know where to start. So I think a lot of- Thank you. Can I mean it? For those who aren't familiar with you, how would you describe yourself and what you do?
00:01:04
Speaker
I first and foremost think of myself as a marketer, but I'm an author, podcaster, and global mentor. That's really, I really take a lot of pride in my mentorship.
Storytelling and Authenticity on Twitter
00:01:17
Speaker
When you were the SVP of global communications for DKNY back in 2009, the very early days of Twitter, you operated its Twitter handle, DKNYPRgirl, and you amassed like 1.5 million followers. It was early days of Twitter, but you seem to have such an intuitive knack for communications and for knowing
00:01:39
Speaker
what people were going to respond to and what would resonate with them. And I was curious, do you feel like you've always had that? Is it something even as a kid, you could just navigate or do you feel like that was something that it was like a superpower you discovered in real time in your professional life?
00:01:56
Speaker
Such an interesting question. I think, first of all, you have to remember, when I started DQI PR Girl in 2009, I was already, for 11 years, Senior Vice President of Global Communications for Donna Karen and DKY at that point. Obviously, I didn't start out as Senior Vice President, but that's where I ended up.
00:02:13
Speaker
So communications and understanding how to shape a story was a skill set that yes, of course I had that skill set. I think what I learned via initiation by fire on Twitter, because it was the early days and certainly for fashion, no brands were really in the space yet.
00:02:33
Speaker
I intuitively learned that it really wasn't about selling anything. It was about telling a great story. And part of what I've always been known for is my directness and my ability to just say it like it is. And at the time, fashion brands were very close to the chest. People didn't see behind the scenes of like how a fashion show was produced or celebrity dressing or anything. Everything was very buttoned up from the outside.
00:03:03
Speaker
So that's what I used as my filter to share the brands through the lens of a pure girl living in New York City and giving people that fly on the worldview.
00:03:16
Speaker
It's funny when you talk about how buttoned up things were. And I think now it's the opposite of that transparency and behind the scenes. And that's what people are interested in. And I suppose another way that brands are curating their presence online, that's really interesting.
Books and Mentorship Philosophy
00:03:33
Speaker
So I want to talk a little bit about your books. Your very first book, Leave Your Mark, it was really popular, especially among folks in communications or fashion. How does your latest book on brand build on and further it?
00:03:47
Speaker
Leave Your Mark was actually born because of my persona as Deque My PR Girl. And I was approached by a publisher to write that because they were following me on Twitter, reading my blog, and basically called me one day cold and said, I think there's a book in here somewhere.
00:04:07
Speaker
That was a scary proposition because I had no intention of writing a book. So part of how I came to terms with it was the idea that I could mentor at scale all the people who were DMing me to ask for career advice, to ask how I got into fashion, what it's like to be a publicist. So leave your mark is really, I think of it as a career mentorship.
00:04:31
Speaker
And I think of it as the perfect graduation gift. It's perfect for anyone in college or right out of college. And it's really my story of how I got into fashion and it's very double where as Prada meets career advice. On brand picks up.
00:04:49
Speaker
right when I'm at the height of DKYPR Girl and I'm basically about to leave the company and faced with my own personal rebrand from corporate publicist to entrepreneur and author.
00:05:04
Speaker
On brand is really for anyone from intern to CEO, because the reality is every single person on this planet has some version of a personal brand. It starts with what makes you. So how you're showing up in any medium is something that every person needs to think about.
00:05:23
Speaker
I absolutely love the book. I think it's so smart and so relevant for the career landscape of today. Your book is really a post-pandemic career advice book. I know that you've suggested that for folks who are just starting to build their personal brand, if they feel a little stuck, if they're like, who am I?
00:05:43
Speaker
they could ask friends and colleagues for three words that describe them, which I think was such good advice. And I was really curious, could I ask what your words are for yourself? Of course, you can ask me anything. Yes. But just to explain for everyone listening, throughout on brand,
00:05:59
Speaker
I have these exercises called mental gymnastics where you're prompted in small digestible bite size questions to really be self-reflective and everything from doing your own Venn diagram to answering the question that you just asked, which is describe yourself in three words professionally and then
00:06:19
Speaker
ask those same set of questions to people in your orbit to see if they would actually give you the same adjectives. So for me, the first word that people would say is probably direct, very direct.
00:06:34
Speaker
sometimes to a fault, but I'm very direct. But you also know that you're getting the real deal when I give feedback or I express something. The second word that I would say is decisive. I'm very decisive. I've always been decisive, not even just as a leader, but even coming up in my career. I intuitively go with my gut and I have a really strong feeling toward
00:06:57
Speaker
the path. I can be wrong but I feel really strongly about the direction I'm going into. And then I would say nurturing because being a mentor is something that has always been part of my personal brand even growing up. I like pretended like I was a teacher with my friends and I was always wanting to teach something and help people and not allow people to make
00:07:21
Speaker
mistakes that I already saw the answers to. Why should you have to work through that when someone can tell you, hey, don't do it that way. Here's how you do it. So that's really how I see myself professionally. And I think most people would agree with that. Thank you. That resonates with me a bit. I thought that you maybe were going to stay confident because you always seem so confident to me. When you were on Good Morning America, you said something to the effect of,
00:07:50
Speaker
Speaking to folks who have imposter syndrome, if you're in the room, you belong there. I love that. I feel like it hit me on like a visceral level and I thought anyone with imposter syndrome needs to put that on a post-it note near their desk. But you seem so confident to me. Have you ever struggled with imposter syndrome yourself?
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
00:08:10
Speaker
Thank you for saying that. Every single person struggles with imposter syndrome. No one is immune. You read the book, so you know, growing up, I had a stutter and was deathly afraid of speaking in any public forum whatsoever. And I'm not talking about good morning America. I'm talking like in a group team setting of asking to speak on the spot in front of people was really a struggle. And obviously I worked through that with a lot of speech therapy, but
00:08:38
Speaker
The idea if you're in the room you belong there is really meant to shift people's mindset because what a lot of people do when they get an opportunity, let's just say, is to think, am I smart enough for this? Was I the most deserving of this opportunity? And it is a fact that women think this more than men, right? So should I be the one to represent my company at this conference? There's so many other people who do a great job. You start to have all the what ifs, right?
00:09:05
Speaker
But what you should be doing is thinking to yourself, okay, I'm in this room. Now, what do I want to do now that I'm in here? What impression do I want to leave? So starting off the bat with the foundational idea that if you're in the room, you belong there.
00:09:23
Speaker
It's because someone else saw something in you that you actually haven't seen for yourself yet. And those are the best people to keep around you in your orbit because sometimes you do need other people to reflect their views on you for you to actually be like, oh yeah, I can do that. My manager thinks I can do that. And that's a really important thing. When I start to feel imposter syndrome, I reset myself and I say to myself, why not me?
00:09:55
Speaker
And it happened with the Leave Your Mark podcast. Leave Your Mark the book came out in 2015. In 2019, when I was like, oh, I should do a podcast. I had all these meetings with Spotify and Audible and all these production teams. And everyone said, no, no one wanted to work with me.
00:10:11
Speaker
And I was really bummed and I was like, oh my God, obviously they don't think I can host a podcast effectively or they don't think I'm big enough or whatever the case may be. And you do start to feel like less than. And then I said to myself, like,
Personal Branding in a Remote Work Era
00:10:26
Speaker
why not me? Like, why can't I live out my dream of being Oprah? I can do that.
00:10:31
Speaker
And I Googled it and I figured out how to do it, right? And now it's 180 episodes later. But when you ask yourself the question, why not me? You're going to be hard pressed to find an answer because the truth is it can be you if you allow yourself to rebrand your fear. Yes.
00:10:49
Speaker
You give so many excellent tips on how to do that. Do you think that COVID and the shift to remote work has influenced the way people need to cultivate their online brand or even their brand digitally at work, working remotely? Meredith, you hit the nail on the head. It really is the inspiration for on-brand because I think in this hybrid and sometimes very virtual world we now work in,
00:11:16
Speaker
It's the responsibility of every person to understand how they're showing up, no matter the medium. And I wrote a piece recently for Harvard Business Review on the importance of building social capital, especially as a remote worker, because you can become invisible.
00:11:33
Speaker
If you were out of sight, out of mind, you have to be not only over communicating, but actually working on persuasive writing skills and making sure that you are earning social capital with your colleagues and raising your hand for projects and making sure that you're top of mind. So the entire inspiration for our brand is really telling people the world has changed.
00:11:58
Speaker
And right now, if you're not doing the work to shape your narrative and shift their perception, they will happily make up their own version of you. Yeah. If someone is feeling, say it's a remote worker and they are feeling a bit invisible and they have not yet done a lot of work on thinking about cultivating their own brand or reputation, are there a few first steps that you'd recommend they take
00:12:26
Speaker
Yes, so I think understanding who your stakeholders are, right? It's very important, not just on your team and not just your manager, but in the periphery, right? Those cross-functional relationships are really important. And I think having a regular cadence of touch bases, not just with your manager, but with other people too, to actually have some time to connect.
00:12:50
Speaker
Not necessarily about projects, but also just one-on-one as peers is really important. But the other thing is making sure that you are up to date on information. Like the reality is, and it's unfortunate, but especially when there's hybrid teams, the people who are in the office
00:13:10
Speaker
have a benefit because they're always in the know. They're always the first to get the information. So if you are the remote person, making sure that you're following up and saying, hey, what's happening this week? What's on the agenda? Making sure that you're aware of what the goals are this week or what the status is of projects to make sure that you're able to stay on top of everything. I think if you're not proactively asking people for information, they may not send you information just on their own.
00:13:39
Speaker
And it's really important for you to be up to speed on everything and also be connecting with people. Yes, I totally agree with everything you said. So regular touch points and then being your own advocate to root out the info that
00:13:55
Speaker
they haven't thought to get to you yet. And also, by the way, raising your hand to say, hey, do you all need help on your project? Being someone who is great to work with shows up in a lot of different ways. And one of those ways is to be really gracious with your time and to actually care about somebody else's project.
00:14:14
Speaker
I'm curious for your input on aesthetics because I have to say for folks listening, Elisa's background is gorgeous. It's black and white. She looks beautiful. It's a recognizable, simple style. Do you feel like one needs to be mindful of that or how much do you think that matters?
00:14:32
Speaker
So I do have a whole chapter on visual identity and on brand, and I think of it in a couple different ways. One, it is a tool at your disposal. I'm a firm believer in repetition is reputation. So I wear a red lip every single day. That's my signature. It's how I feel best, but it also becomes how I'm known. If I'm not wearing a red lip, people are literally like, are you dying? That's basically what happened.
00:14:57
Speaker
And I've always been someone who feels better dressed up in some fashion. And I think in the book, I have a lot of different expert contributors and
00:15:09
Speaker
In the visual identity section, I have two different contributors. One is Lynn Paolo, who's the customer for all of Shonda Rhimes' shows. And we spoke a lot about creating Olivia Pope's style on Scandal and the idea of how you can really convey a character and a personality through clothing.
00:15:27
Speaker
versus Elizabeth Holmes, who is a journalist and an expert on royal style and an author. And there we really spoke about how the royals, they don't really do interviews. They appear. But when they appear, their visual identity is what is doing the talking for them. So when we bring that back to the work world and we think about how you show up on Zoom or in person and what you appear like,
00:15:55
Speaker
signals to people how much you care about that meeting or not. No one ever got in trouble for looking polished, right? So if you want to, I still believe like dressing for the job that you want, not the job you have, has validity. And it does show people that you care about what you're doing. So if I showed up today for this show and I was like rolled out of bed and looked a mess,
00:16:19
Speaker
You would probably think she doesn't really care about being on this show. She's like doing me a favor, but no, you show up and you say, you know what, I'm excited to be here and I'm presenting that way. I like the idea of it being a tool at your disposal. I think that's a really cool way to look at it. And I guess this is somewhat related, but do you think that there are differences between personal branding for men and for women? And if so, how do you navigate them?
Gender Differences in Branding
00:16:48
Speaker
Such a great question and I don't think anyone has asked me that yet. Oh, really? Yes. So it's interesting. Yesterday I spoke at Scotiabank and the women's ERG group put the event together and the event is how to establish your personal brand at work to drive success. And I loved how many men came.
00:17:09
Speaker
Because the truth is that it's for everyone, right? So I think where we differ is women tend to be more perfectionists. We tend to doubt ourselves more. We tend to question. You always hear with job applications, women always think they have to have 100% of the skills that are listed. Men are like, I have 60%, I'm good, I'm going to apply. So it's a different mindset. So when we think about personal branding for women,
00:17:36
Speaker
think it's much harder for women to be able to share their value and their accomplishments publicly. And part of what I'm teaching an on-brand is to get comfortable talking about what makes you and the value that you add in a strategic and elegant way. And there's a ratio to it because it's uncomfortable work. No one wants to talk about themselves. No one likes anyone who brags. We all know those people on social media that are just talking about themselves all day.
00:18:05
Speaker
So the idea of sharing something that you're proud of, you shared something one time, go out and proactively try to support or amplify five other people, can be men or women, so that you're balancing more amplification for others versus yourself. And that I think can help a lot.
00:18:27
Speaker
I really like that advice. I noticed for myself, if I'm posting something of my own, depending on my mood and how I'm feeling that day, I could definitely have a moment of cringe and then anxiety about, is anyone going to like this? Does everyone hate me? But I've noticed when I'm posting to promote or support or uplift other folks.
00:18:48
Speaker
I don't care at all. I just want to get that post out there and all. So it's also like a nicer experience as a user. But you can combine those two things, right? So in the live example of my keynote at Scotiabank, I want people on LinkedIn to know that I'm doing corporate talks and I want people to know that I'm speaking at banks, which is a coup for someone from fashion PR, right? So it's like, I have broken through to the business side.
00:19:14
Speaker
But I also want to be able to provide a service to the people who are following me. So sharing some of the insights from that talk, sharing a question from an audience member, sharing the advice that I gave during the talk is a way to bridge, one, letting people know that I spoke and thanking the people who brought me in to speak, but also giving something back to the community that they're going to learn from.
00:19:42
Speaker
So it doesn't just have to be, you're sharing a win. You can combine it with gratitude and also education. And yeah, I appreciate you making that distinction. I think it's a really good strategy. And when you're talking about kind of.
00:20:00
Speaker
men versus women's internal experience of branding that not to talk in over generalizations, but women maybe tend to be a little more perfectionist, a little bit harder on themselves, a little more hesitant to self promote. Do you think it's all internal or do you think that actually women might be judged a little more harshly for
00:20:25
Speaker
self-promotion in a way that they need to be a little careful about how they do it, more so than men. Both. Both. And I think it's not that women are judged more harshly regardless, but men might be self-promotional and maybe they'll be judged for that. Maybe someone might be like, oh my God, this guy.
00:20:50
Speaker
but they don't pair. And the difference is we generally do. And because of that, we hold ourselves back from competing in that same way. So a guy is not going to care if someone, oh my God, why is that guy talking about? He's moved on already. We are much more in our heads with
00:21:13
Speaker
for yourself. Are there any other social media rules that you follow? Oh my God, so many. I think understanding your brand guardrails is one of the most important exercises in on-brand and helping to know what are the areas that you can play in.
Balancing Authenticity and Strategic Branding
00:21:30
Speaker
What are the areas that you should not play in and where those guardrails begin and end? Because that mental filter of putting everything you're doing through that filter is what is most important. I have a very clear sense of the topics that I speak about online.
00:21:47
Speaker
there are things that I will not speak about. And a great example is my book came out April 18th, that Saturday night, my publicist texted me and she's, oh my God, you got an invitation to go on television tonight to talk about X, Y, and Z. And I was like, you know what?
00:22:03
Speaker
That topic is not within my brain guardrails. That's not a topic I know enough about. It's not something that I feel like I can have a super informed opinion. So when you have a super clear understanding of where you sit with regard to topics, social issues, anything you want to name,
00:22:27
Speaker
It creates a sense of security because you can stay on brand if you stay within that filter. For me, I have two rules. One is if I wouldn't feel comfortable seeing my post as a full page ad in the New York Times, I don't post it. Because even if you have 100 followers, your post can catch fire and can cost you your job. So being mindful of if the magnifying glass blew that post up and went viral,
00:22:57
Speaker
Are you still happy that you posted it? And the second thing that I do, especially when I'm trying to consider, I don't do this every single time, but sometimes I will say to myself like, oh, I should post that. And I'm like, why do I hope to gain from posting that? What's my purpose in posting that?
00:23:14
Speaker
So I do think it goes back to the old adage, think before you speak. Think before you post. What is the ripple effect? Pebble in the pond, right? You drop pebble in the pond, there's a ripple effect. What is the ripple effect of actually sharing that thing? And the most important thing is, who's watching? Is it your clients? Is it your investors? Is it your boss always thinking about the audience?
00:23:39
Speaker
for your own personal brand guidelines, do you have them written down in a document somewhere or is it just something you hold in your head?
00:23:48
Speaker
In truth, I held them in my head for a really long time, but when I wrote on brand, I had to reverse engineer how I ended up with a personal brand. Like I didn't set out to create a personal brand. I led with my gut and what I believed in and my values and what I wanted to convey online. And that basically created my personal brand because the more that you
00:24:13
Speaker
repeat messaging or align with things over and over again, the more you become known for those things. So it wasn't intentional, but at the same time, when I was writing on brands and I was thinking, okay, how can I be prescriptive in educating people how to do this? So I had to go back in my own process, in my own journey. I know that some people feel
00:24:34
Speaker
And I don't agree with this for the record, but their feeling is that by being really strategic about what they post online and having a plan around the topics they want to cover, what they will not talk about, maybe having a bit of using judgment and having a professional filter around things to them, it can feel inauthentic.
00:24:58
Speaker
And it stops them from actually cultivating a brand and they say things like, I don't want to be fake. And I think it stops them from achieving their goals and opportunities they might not even think about potentially having available to themselves. What do you say to those folks who are like, all this strategy, it's fake.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, I love this question. So I'm probably one of the most authentic real people you'll meet. And I take pride in them. It's not being fake to have a clear strategy of how you want to show up in this world. Online, in real life, over email. It's not fake. It's called smart. And one of the concepts in on-brand, which you've read, is
00:25:48
Speaker
Don't bring your whole self to work because not every part of yourself is appropriate for work. So understanding where your strengths lie and where your weaknesses lie can only help you. And putting every single thing out there online is the result of a post pandemic over sharing error. And I wrote a piece on this in the New York Post. You can Google it.
00:26:11
Speaker
It has to stop because what's happening is people are confusing social engagement, how many likes they're getting, how many comments with success. And the truth of the matter is you could post something that gets a ton of engagement, but is something that can actually hurt your career if a stakeholder in your career, your investor, your boss, whomever, your client sees it and doesn't actually feel the same way about it.
00:26:41
Speaker
So it may make you feel good. I actually posted about this on Instagram, I think last week. It may make you feel good, but it doesn't necessarily equate to success. And people have no boundaries anymore. And my strategy and certainly how I position this entire book is everything you're doing
00:27:03
Speaker
online in real life should be in service of your North Star goal.
Social Media Strategy and Content Adaptation
00:27:08
Speaker
And if it's not, if what you're posting on social media is not, it's okay. Like you can be online for entertainment value or whatever, but is it hurting the progress of your goal? That's what you have to consider.
00:27:25
Speaker
There are so many amazing sound bites in that. It's not fake, it's smart. What you said about confusing engagement for being successful or helpful toward your goals, I think that is huge. I think especially on LinkedIn, personal or controversial things will get hundreds of likes and that maybe feels good, but it's not the type of content that you want a prospective client or employer to see and that's complicated.
00:27:53
Speaker
Yes. And actually do we, are we allowed to curse on this podcast? Yes ma'am. Yes. Okay. So, you know, my chapter, beware of zero fucks given branding because the truth is being controversial online.
00:28:06
Speaker
will get you a following, right? And we'll get you as many haters as lovers. And we see that with Donald Trump. We see that with Elon Musk. We see people who are very polarizing, yet they find their audience. That is one tactic. It's not for the weak. It's for people who don't care that much about what people think about.
00:28:29
Speaker
That's not a strategy that I would ever employ, but certainly being controversial will get you notoriety. For people posting on social frequently, perhaps on LinkedIn or elsewhere, trying to build their business or their brand or achieve a goal.
00:28:51
Speaker
but they are finding it at times difficult, like it's hijacking their attention or the engagement or lack of engagement they're getting that day makes them feel bad. Do you have adjusted boundaries for how you can consistently show up in service of your goals, but also not get bummed out about it? Yes, great question. In on brand, I go through
00:29:18
Speaker
every aspect of social media, the digital landscape, content strategy, all of it.
00:29:25
Speaker
I don't have a content calendar. I don't have any document where I'm like, tomorrow I'm posting X, Y, and Z. My social media strategy has always been gut intuitive. And if I don't feel like I have something to say, I don't post. I think obligatory posting is where you can really put out some content, which falls short. And then that's also where you're lacking engagement.
00:29:51
Speaker
I really feel that the most important thing when it comes to content is one, understanding the medium you're putting this content. You can't paintbrush the same content across. So for example, today what I posted on Instagram reels was a video, obviously.
00:30:11
Speaker
I took all of the lessons from that reel and wrote out a post on LinkedIn. I didn't put that video on LinkedIn. Sometimes I do, but today I was like, you know what? I think for LinkedIn, the format of this particular topic is going to be better digested in written form.
00:30:28
Speaker
And the thing is you have to test and learn, but in addition to making content for the medium, you also have to think about the format that the platform is trying to get you to do. So when reels came out and everyone kept on just pushing their static images, everyone was like, oh my God, my engagement's dropped. Yeah, because Instagram wants you to post videos.
00:30:51
Speaker
So staying up on what the platforms actually are promoting is really important and I go through all this and on brand, but that's part of it. So when you start to feel bad about engagement on a post, think first about is the format correct for the medium that you posted it in?
00:31:11
Speaker
And two, is there like a hook? Did you start off sounding like it's going to be a commercial or is there something where you're going to draw the audience in to stick around and read more or listen more? But also I think going back to the mental filter of like, why am I posting this in the first place? If you feel really strongly about wanting to share something or put education into the world or inspire or motivate or whatever your goal is for this piece of content,
00:31:41
Speaker
and you know that it's a really good piece of content.
00:31:45
Speaker
It will find its audience. It will. And you have to not care that much about certain posts that do better than others. You can do a post mortem and look through and be like, okay, what are the posts that resonated the most? And do more of that. But also when you were considering the topics that have done well, also pay attention to what format was that topic conveyed it. Because the format in combination with the topic is really the secret recipe.
00:32:17
Speaker
I think that's really great advice. I like that a lot. You have to test and learn. I have multiple accounts and I sometimes purposely will test the same piece of content on different accounts just to see what happens. I will take the same exact topic.
00:32:36
Speaker
and convey it in different ways to test and see what happens. It's really all about experimentation and not being precious with the continent. Because it doesn't, it's not that deep. It doesn't matter if it doesn't perform. It really doesn't. You learn from it and you move on.
00:32:54
Speaker
I had Jess Cook on this podcast who has a pretty strong following on LinkedIn, is very creative content director. And similarly, she does not have a calendar either. And I thought she would have, and I might've presumed you did too, for whatever reason. And she said something similar. You just need a lot of that bats. And sometimes just the tiniest tweak of the messaging is what will help a resonate with folks. So I have a really great example from, so I have two kids. I have a son who's just graduated from high school and a daughter who's 15.
00:33:24
Speaker
My son, I'm very proud to say, got into Wharton. And we had our acceptance video and I posted it on Instagram and it went completely viral. It was like almost 200,000 views. And I'm like, I'm going to post it on TikTok. Now my TikTok has four followers, like literal four followers. However, I was like, these are the kind of videos that do well on TikTok. Let me see what happens. So I posted on TikTok and I say something like on the title card, proud mom moment, blah, blah, blah.
00:33:54
Speaker
So, you know, a couple of days later, it's like struggling. It's going, I don't know, a thousand views or something. And my son sees it and he's, oh yeah, you messed up that onscreen title. And I'm like, I did? How? You can't say proud mom. The minute you say proud mom, no one wants to see it. And I'm like, huh, what? And so I archive the post. By the way, never delete a post. Archive post. The algorithm does not like deletions.
00:34:22
Speaker
Okay, these are little tricks all in on brand. But anyway, so I reposted it without prod mom and it completely flew. So it's just, the littlest, tiniest details can be the difference of something working or not working. Using the native captioning shoes. A lot of people make their videos outside of the platform. You can't, you've got to use their native tools. They want you to use their tools.
00:34:52
Speaker
That is fascinating. First of all, congratulations, Wharton. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, it is a proud mom moment, even though I couldn't see it on TikTok, apparently.
00:35:00
Speaker
So one, highly recommend your book. We'll throw the links to both of your books in your website.
Recommended Resources and Community Engagement
00:35:07
Speaker
But also you have so many episodes of your awesome podcast. If someone wanted to jump in, is there a particular episode that you're like, we'll start with this one. This is the right starting point. So the titles of each episode have usually between two and three very clear takeaways.
00:35:24
Speaker
as to what you're going to learn from the episode. So I think it can be specific to what you need to know about now, like whether it's like negotiating a salary or starting a business, whatever the case may be. I did read the introduction to on brand on there, that's an episode and I also
00:35:43
Speaker
have like behind the scenes episode. My friend Alex Strauss interviewed me on really like the intel behind the scenes of like how on brand came to be and my feelings about all of that. So if you don't know me, that's a great place to start, but there's, I mean, my guests are so smart and so transparent about where they struggled and what they learned. And I think it's all about paying forward so people don't have to make the same mistakes. Yeah. All right. Is there anything else I forgot to ask that you'd want to say or promote?
00:36:15
Speaker
I would say also I have the Leave Your More community where I mentor privately. It's a small community. It is for senior college students.
00:36:26
Speaker
through the first 15 years in the workforce. And it's really for people who, you know, overachiever, people who want to leave their mark and also want direct mentorship from me. All of this information is on my website, alizalike.com. And I'm really right now trying to just build my corporate speaking career. So if anyone wants me to come and speak on how to establish your personal brand at work to drive success, hit me up.
00:36:54
Speaker
I can imagine that being an amazing talk to go through. Thank you. Thank you so much, Elisa. I'm so grateful for your time and you gave so many amazing bits of advice that I know our listeners will be thankful for. So thank you. Oh my God. Thank you so much for inviting me on and asking such great questions.
00:37:13
Speaker
All right, folks, I hope that you enjoyed that episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked it, please subscribe or review us. And if you want to check out our newsletter, Content People, it is in the show notes. See you next time. Bye.