215: The Statistical Importance of Building Your Personal Brand with AJ Vaden

“People are following people more than companies more than ever before.” - AJ Vaden Hey guys, welcome back to ONKEN RADIO (previously NION Radio), the podcast where we explore the body, mind, and soul of the creative entrepreneur. It’s my goal to help you take your creativity, business, and life to the next level. I’m so glad you’re joining me on this journey! Today, I’ve got an extra special guest for you to discuss critical elements that help us build our identity alchemy by focusing on building a solid personal brand. To do that these days, it’s essential to establish trust with your audience.  I met both AJ Vaden and her husband Rory through our mutual friend, Lewis Howes, who many of you might know from this podcast. Here’s a taste of some of her wisdom: “60% of Americans said the number one most important thing that dictates who I purchase from is testimonials. What do other people have to say [about] working with you? That is the cheapest, fastest thing you could do to grow your business. Testimonials are by far the most important thing.” - AJ Vaden I wanted to have AJ on the show to speak more about the strategies for building a personal brand. If you are interested in doing a personal brand photoshoot with me as I did with Rory and AJ, you can visit here to get more information and submit a form to see if we're a good fit.  But right now, let’s jump straight in! Who Is AJ Vaden? AJ Vaden started a company called a Brand Builders Group with her husband, Rory Vaden, and is an international speaker, million-dollar producer, and co-host of The Influential Personal Brand podcast. As a personal brand strategist, she challenges and inspires people to reinvent themselves as part of building and monetizing their personal brand. AJ has personally worked with thousands of individuals to help them focus their expertise, expand their reach, build their reputation, and brand the one thing no one else has — their name. Over the last ten years, she has been a part of the founding, launching, and building of a very successful 8-figure coaching business, a multi-million-dollar consulting business, and a 7-figure speaking business. Along with her company, Brand Builders Group, AJ was featured in a 3-page spread in Success Magazine on the impacts of personal branding and recently being named one of the Top 5 Personal Branding Speakers of 2019.  Her client roster includes working with top-level executives from organizations such as Bridgestone, Verizon Cellular Sales, Home Franchise Concepts, and DirecTV as well as working with well-known speakers, best-selling authors, entrepreneurs, and online influencers such as mega podcast host Lewis Howes and original “shark,” creator of the infomercial and serial entrepreneur, Kevin Harrington. AJ has taken 25 years of setbacks, successes, and tragedies and distilled them into simple yet powerful lessons that will help anyone become better than ever. What People Care About Brand Builders Group recently conducted a study in the United States using a third party, The Center for Generational Kinetics, which is free to download here. From their six months of gathering research, AJ shares the number one thing people highlighted as important when evaluating a personal image and brand. “The number one thing is: It's all about the authenticity of the human connection. One of the biggest things that we've learned and what we buy into is that people don't care much about what you sell and what you do — they care more about who you are. We've been doing these own studies with our own set of audiences, and we will post something about our study, a podcast, or some piece of original content, and it gets a third of the engagement of posting a video playing tee-ball with my two boys.” - AJ Vaden I wasn’t expecting to hear that. It’s interesting, too, that AJ has tested the research and seen the effect of posting personal things above a more formal piece of content and getting mo...