Jane Anderson – Tie your brand to your compensation

Jane Anderson is a Keynote Speaker, a podcaster, and a LinkedIn Business to Business Marketing and Lead Generation expert.

Jane Anderson has helped over 12,000 people globally, have a greater impact by helping them develop their personal brands, LinkedIn profiles, and their presentation and interview skills.

She is the host of the #1 ranked Podcast, “Jane Anderson – Brand You Show” and the author of three books, including the book we’ll talk about today, IMPACT, How To Build Your Personal Brand for The Connection Economy.

JANE ANDERSON’S CAREER JOURNEY

Jane started her career in retail working for a very popular family owned business. During her time with the Mavis company, Jane noticed the personal connections and stories customers seemed to have towards the company owner.

This was her first experience with a personally branded business.

Jane would eventually move on to work for another personally branded business, Tony Ferguson, a weight loss company, which was affiliated with Terry White a retail pharmacy chain in Australia.

Again, she noticed the power of a personally branded business and the connection customers held with the brand. In both cases, with the Mavis company and Tony Ferguson, the owner’s personalities and interaction with their customers played a significant role in the customer experience.

Jane Anderson came to realize her passion lied in working with personally branded businesses. It was this passion that lead her to the Super Retail Group, where she became the trainer responsible for helping people grow into executive roles.

Eventually, Jane was acting in a career coach and counselor capacity both with the Super Retail Group and with individuals on the side.

After a change of government in Australia left about 17,000 people redundant, or as we would say here in the States, they were laid-off, Jane went to work helping with outplacement services.

This is when Jane started to realize that instead of finding new jobs, many of these individuals needed to start their own businesses, which she helped them do under their name dot com.

IMPACT: How To Build Your Personal Brand for The Connection Economy

Jane readily admits she is not a fan of writing. Yet despite her self-professed non-writer status, she has managed to publish 3 books with another one on the way.

Our discussion focused on her book titled, Impact – How to build your Personal Brand for the Connection economy.

Jane defines personal branding in the same manner as Jeff Bezos, meaning your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. This includes how you show up online.

Let’s face it, in this digital-first world we live in, your first impression can be made even while you’re asleep.

Jane also links our personal brands to “being known for knowing something” which is obviously different than just knowing something. Positioning plays a big role in how you are perceived especially online.

Jane and I spent some time discussing the reasons she believes personal branding is becoming more “mainstream” today considering it’s been 20 years since the release of Tom Peter’s article, The Brand Called You.

Jane believes LinkedIn has made the difference. LinkedIn has helped to bring individuals digital presence more front and center as a part of their branding assets which has generated additional awareness to the importance of personal branding.

LinkedIn has helped people become known for what they know.

In addition, Jane Anderson suggested, as Taylor Pearson did during our discussion, that the ability for people to self-publish has created a new way for people to stand out in their markets.

For those who are still not quite on board yet, Jane does a great job explaining how your brand links to your currency, i.e. your compensation. Unfortunately for those in this boat, they may not make this connection until they need to find their next job.

Another challenge people face when considering personal branding, is they don't know what they want. Reminiscent of my discussion with Scott Barlow, Jane echoed Scott’s comments that we are far better at stating what we don’t want then we are at stating what we do want.

It’s hard to brand yourself when you don’t know what you want to be known for.

The Rise of the Expert

Jane describes in her book a phenomenon she calls the Rise of the Expert. In addition to being known for what they know, these experts are also well-liked individuals which means they earn trust.

And as we’ve all heard many times over, people do business with people they know like and trust.

As Jane works with businesses, and as business itself becomes more volatile, she sees this rising need for individuals to come into these business situations to help in a consultative capacity.

In these cases, companies are looking for someone with your unique perspective and expertise to help them resolve their challenges or issues. If you’re known for what you know in this case, you may be the expert they call in.

In addition, Jane also attributes the rise of the expert to social media which in her mind has really leveled the playing field. You no longer have to be a big organization in order to obtain larger contacts, as long as you’re known for what you know.

This is important because it’s estimated that by the year 2020, 50% of the workforce will be self-employed. Becoming known for what you know, is how you link your brand to your compensation.

Self-awareness vs. Self-worth

An important aspect of personal branding is self-awareness. Jane Anderson subscribes to Gary Vaynerchuk’s definition of self-awareness and knowing how you work. Here’s a great video Gary put together on self-awareness.

Becoming self-aware is all about understanding yourself, how you work, where you add the greatest value and maybe, more importantly, knowing what you are not good at doing.

In order to get to this point, Jane expresses the need for you to reach a “meta-level”, a place that provides a helicopter view of yourself if you will, so you can see yourself as others see you.

This is exactly what the personal branding blueprint online course can help you achieve.

This meta-level will help you unpack your thinking and enable you to break down the complex into the simple.

Unfortunately, many people get self-awareness confused with self-worth. You see it’s possible for you to be self-aware but not understand your self-worth.

Your self-worth revolves around how you view yourself compared to others. Jane Anderson explains, if you are looking to enter a field and your initial thoughts are around all of the other people already in the field and how can you possibly add anything that hasn’t already been said, you are actually devaluing yourself and decreasing your self-worth in your mind.

Kathryn and Jullian refer to this mindset as a scarcity mindset. This impacts your self-worth and your branding.

This is also when the imposter syndrome starts to kick in. To get past this mindset and raise your self-worth Jane recommends working with mentors.

The Importance of Mentors and Coaches

I mentioned in the introduction that Jane is someone one I look to as a long-distance mentor. Turns out, Jane Anderson is a big advocate of having advisors and mentors herself.

As you begin your journey to becoming a thought leader or expert, you need to put yourself “out there”. This will take you out of your comfort zone and you will need the reassurance from others to keep you going.

Another benefit of a mentor is they will hold you accountable, keep you on track and help you get your sequencing correct. Meaning they are “doing the doing” but in the wrong order.

Mentors will help you prioritize your activities which will save you a tremendous amount of time and keep you from making the same mistakes your mentor has already made.

When it comes to finding the right mentor, Jane Anderson suggests finding someone who is doing what you want to do. In others words, it doesn’t do you any good to have a mentor for basket weaving if your mentor has never weaved a basket.

Once you’ve identified someone in your area of expertise who has done or is doing what you want to do, Jane recommends approaching them with an abundance mindset by offering to help them.

In Jane’s experience, what happens too often is people approach a potential mentor with an ask, “can you help me do something”. Instead, offer to help first, to be of service, and show them respect for their time.