Elevate your business through branding with Dr. Sev Talks Money Podcast’s guest, Mildred Talabi. Discover the power of personal branding, find your target audience, and create resonating content. Join us on this journey to unlock your brand’s potential today!
Do you want to position yourself and your business for growth and opportunities? If the answer is yes, join me and my guest for an enlightening discussion on how a strong personal brand can benefit you and your business.
Mildred Talabi has spent the last decade mastering the art of personal branding in both her career and business. She trained as a Journalist and worked in the media, before transitioning into PR (Public Relations) and then Communications.
Mildred specializes in working with female leaders and women in business to build powerful and authentic personal brands through being visible on LinkedIn. She is a recognized LinkedIn Influencer, with over 50,000 followers, and the founder of Visible Women Tribe – a global membership community for women in business and leadership.
Connect with her here: www.linkedin.com/in/mildredtalabi
Learn more about her here: www.mildredtalabi.com
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On every episode of the Dr. Sev Talks Money podcast, Dr. Sev and her guests explore the essentials of personal finance, the psychology behind financial decisions, life and business strategies, family dynamics related to money, and more. Discover actionable strategies to boost your confidence and improve your financial well-being through the inspiring success and recovery stories shared by Dr. Sev and her guests.
As part of her direct client services, Dr. Sev helps busy women take command of their basic personal finances so they can reach their financial goals and gain peace of mind.
Dr. Sev encourages people to take control of their finances with a practical plan that’s tailored to their specific needs so they can reach their own financial goals.
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Podcast Transcript
Dr. Sev
Today we are talking about positioning you and your business for growth and opportunities through branding. I have a special guest with me today. Her name is Mildred Chalabi. She has spent the last decade mastering the art of personal branding in both her career and business. She trained as a journalist, and worked in the media before transitioning to public relations. And then communications. Mildred specializes in working with female leaders and women in business to build powerful and authentic personal brands through be invisible on LinkedIn. Now, she knows what she’s talking about, because she is a recognized LinkedIn influencer with over 50,000 followers. And she is the founder of visible women tribe, a global membership community for women in business, and leadership. Mildred, welcome to the Dr. Sam talks money podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I am so pleased to be here. And I’m looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, so am I so am I. So let’s dive right in. Now, how important is branding for growing a business?
Mildred Talabi
Ah, where do I start with this? How important is branding? How about absolutely 100,000% and 14? I will I will have to say that there are two types of business? Well, for me more than two types of business models that people haven’t, you know, so there are those who want to grow their business and they don’t feel like you know, they don’t want to be the face of the business, so to speak, in which case, they’re not interested in the personal branding aspect, they may be automated and might use things like advertising tools and channels. And that’s all they do with it. And then But then there’s another segment, you know, in terms of business wise, where it’s a case of some of the most successful businesses are built on the back of personal brands, you know, because your personal brand has the power. In fact, it has 10 times as much reach as your company brand on its own. So we are in this age in this time where people don’t just want to know the companies, they want to know the people behind the companies, they want to know who’s the who’s who’s involved in the business, they want to know who’s the face of the business, they want to know more about the business. So that’s where building a personal brand can really give your business the edge. Because when your people love what you do when they begin to dinner, this whole process of building a personal brand allows you to do what’s called social selling, where people get to know you like you and trust you. And when that process starts to happen. And they buy into you it’s so much easier for them to buy from you. And it all starts with having a visible personal brands.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, I would definitely agree. We want to know who’s behind all the brand, we want to know who you are, we want to know your values. We want to know your ethics. We want to know everything about you because a lot more people are focused on ethical, you know, the the things that are not visual, the things that are not really the selling point per se of your product. But they’re the behind the scenes. How do you value how do you behave in a certain situation? So yes, I totally agree.
Mildred Talabi
Yes, yes. Yeah. And I love that you said that things that are behind the scenes of your business, because yeah, your brand is made up of not just the external stuff of this is who I am, who I serve. It’s, it’s also the values these are what I believe these are the causes I stand by this is this is why my distinction is that whole thing of I help women to build powerful brands, yes, but it must be authentic, connected to who you are as an individual. And it’s true to to you, you know, because that’s how you can sustain it as well, when it’s an authentic personal brand.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, totally. I totally agree. Yeah. Because I don’t want to buy from somebody whose value doesn’t align with me, even if your product is the greatest product. Yeah, so with that, let’s talk about some elements of successful branding. What would you consider a few elements of successful branding?
Mildred Talabi
Okay, so if we’re looking at building your personal brand, and the less Yes, use LinkedIn as a platform, right, because this is where the platform that I specialize in, but some of this can apply to other platforms as well. But if you want to build a successful personal brand on LinkedIn, it starts with off LinkedIn. You know, funnily enough, any brand starts with having clarity around what is my brand? In other words, what do I want to be known for? You know, and if you’re listening to this right now, I want you to ask yourself that question, what is it that I want to be because that’s the starting place of your brand. And then once you have clarity on what you want to be known for, then it’s a case of okay, who do I want to serve? So you need clarity around that as well. So the what and the who, you know the why is personal to you in terms of what is driving you. The why is important to us that Simon Sinek says start with why, you know, but the why allows you to keep on going on the days when you don’t feel like showing up. But you know, and you will have those days you have more. When you don’t feel like showing up, you don’t feel like being visible, the why can drive you. So it’s important that you have your way in mind. But be very clear on the what is my brand? And who am I serving with my brand? And that’s the starting point of building a really powerful personal brand on LinkedIn and beyond.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, I love that. What are you known for? What are you doing? What is it that you are trying to sell, per se? And then who are you selling to? Because you can’t sell to the whole world? Your marketplace is huge. But the people you’re focusing on? Can’t be everybody. Because if you sell to everybody, then you sell to nobody. So
Mildred Talabi
yes, yeah, absolutely. One of my old business coaches, she said it like this, she said, um, you have to learn to alienate in order to resonate. Wow, yeah. Wow, that’s powerful. I’m I’m definitely given that she’s like, You have to be comfortable. And a lot of the time, especially when we’re new in our business, we’re like, Whoa, I don’t want to niche down because I want to serve everyone. I don’t want anyone to feel left out, you know, and I want it and I can serve everyone. Yes, you can serve everyone technically. But as you said, Doctor said you cannot market to everyone. So it’s really important that you define that audience and that you market to a specific audience and resonate with that audience in order for your brand to really drive home with the right people.
Dr. Sev
Yes. Wow. I love you said that, because I was listening to a Facebook live yesterday or the day before. And one of the things that young lady said is you have to have confidence in what it is you’re doing. You have to have confidence to repel the wrong people. Confidence to a trap, the right people, and confidence to make your ask. The reason many times we don’t have confidence to meet the ask is because we don’t know who we are. We don’t know what we’re selling. We don’t know who we’re selling to. And because and I hate the word selling, it’s really more market. Yes, yeah. You know, if we don’t know those that we don’t we’re not competent to make the ask because we don’t know who it is. We are wanting to ask the question. Love. Yeah, love that. Yeah,
Mildred Talabi
that’s it. Oh, when we make the ask. And no one responds because you’re trying to ask everybody, let’s say for example, I have a single mom and a guy who’s like an executive in his 60s, they have completely different needs, for example, in certain criteria, and if you’re like, Well, I’m gonna market to her and to him, you’re not going to be able to resonate with either. So you have to get comfortable with, as you said, comfortable and confident with alienating in order to resonate.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, and you have to get familiar with your people. You have to know your people. Because how do you market to your people, if you don’t know your people? What are their pain points? What it is that would want them to gravitate to you? And what is it that would want them to work with you? You have to know who they are so you can speak to who they are loving this discussion, loving this discussion. So can you give us a specific example of successful branding? Maybe a company or person?
Mildred Talabi
Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many examples and and what I love most about the work that I do with my clients is the transformation that happens for them when they get to this place of building that personal brand. Are they comfortable and confident showing up on LinkedIn and attracting their exact people? One of my favorite client examples is a lady called Dr. Shah Dion if you’re listening to this, but she’s I’ve seen her evolve over the years, massively. When we first met, she was a cartoon character in terms of like the profile pictures of cats and cats. And that was because as she confessed to me later that she didn’t want to be seen, you know, so but in the journey of working together, really helping her to open up and become visible in LinkedIn and build her personal brand. She’s gone on to have this amazing presence on LinkedIn where she’s like, really be making a real difference in the mortgage industry and being like a go to sought after person in that arena because she took those steps to start being visible. Let’s start building a personal brand. You know, so there’s so many other stories of that, that I have similar clients, but it’s this whole idea of this, there’s a whole world of opportunity waiting for you. When you start the invisible when you start building your personal brand on LinkedIn, it’s, it’s amazing. But if we take it on a celebrity level, for example, celebrity, but if you look at Elon Musk, you know, so he has a powerful personal brand, and a lot of his business is driven by his personal brand alone. And people like Richard Branson, like their own personal brand is 10 times that of their company. So you as a person, even if you’re if you have a small business, a large business, you really stepping in front of the stage and owning your personal brand will do wonders for your business at that point.
Dr. Sev
Yeah. All How awesome is that? Right? But it begins with the what and the who? Yes, because if they didn’t know who they were, who it is that they’re targeting, they could not speak to that audience. So now they’ve attracted all of those people. And they have created that powerful personal brand, because they know who it is, they are trying to market to. I love it. Love it. Love it. So tell me one of the things or a few of the things that we can do to find or target audience.
Mildred Talabi
Absolutely. So as I said, the first step is that, once you have the clarity on who your audience is, the next thing is to try and find them, I actually run a challenge every every few months, called the ABC challenge, which is like the audience breakthrough that allows you to I walk my people through the techniques of going through LinkedIn to find connect and engage with your target audience. But some of the strategies involved in that is really kind of go into where they hang out is where are your audience. Now LinkedIn is a massive community of I think, at the last count is over 860 million users on this platform. Inside there is your audience. There is nobody I’ve met, who don’t do not have an audience somewhere inside this 860 million users on LinkedIn. So the trick is finding them you know, and you go and find them and connect with them by going to where they hang out. So this is where, like you said, early adopters, this is where when you know them, and you know their pain points, you know, like their aspirations, you think, Okay, so where would they potentially hang out on LinkedIn? Where would they go to solve their pain points? Where would they go to feed their aspirations, and that’s where you need to be, because that’s what is happening with your audience. So that’s where you need to be and then you find them, you connect with them, you engage with them. And as you develop, I’m a big fan of a relationship based marketing, you know, kind of social selling. So is that as you develop relationships with them through engagement and all of that, it makes that buying process so much easier for them. And for you, because you have more of a pull mechanism, rather than push away agenda and push your products or your services onto people who might not even want to anyway, wouldn’t it be so much better to pull and attract your ideal clients to you like a magnet? So that’s the way that I work and what I teach in this process?
Dr. Sev
Yeah, wise words, indeed. So we talked about the top finding the target audience, or putting that target audience to you once you know who they are, and can address their pain points and their concerns? How do we think about creating content that attracts that ideal customer?
Mildred Talabi
Yes, content, I always like to say that without without content, you can’t be visible without content, you know, so people can’t see you, they can’t hear you, they won’t be able to remember you without you actively creating content on LinkedIn. So how do you create content? Well start with what does my audience want? What do they need? You know, what are the problems that they face? Let’s say you haven’t done your new culture searching, you haven’t done loads of coaching. So you don’t exactly know what the the issues are, start with what you do now start with what you already know about your audience. Okay, these are the some of the things that trouble them. These are some of the pain points, for example, in the work that I do around helping women to become visible on LinkedIn, I know that some of the fears that women have and the barriers that they have about being invisible is this whole idea of the fear of being judged. You know, like, What will people think of me? Or they might say things like, oh, I don’t have, you know, I don’t feel like I have anything important to say, you know, on LinkedIn, who wants to hear my voice. So it’s really you need to become an active listener in your target audience. You know, whether you’re doing that through direct conversations with them on phone On calls or sales calls over, you’re doing that from, as we said earlier, go into where they hang out and see what kind of things are coming up. If you really need to, you can even research online and type of, you know, their target audience and ask what are some of the issues that they’re facing. And then your content needs to start speaking to that, you know, start speaking to them, what you want to do is you want to become somebody who is useful. You know, yeah. That’s the thing, I can’t remember who said it originally, I’ve heard so many people say, it’s, I don’t know who the original quote is. But it’s like, the best way to show someone that you can help them is by helping them, you know, so when you actually help your audience through your content, you help them to do something that you’re useful you help them, they start to know like, and trust you. And then that means that when they’re ready for whatever it is, the service that you provide, and then need that kind of help, you’re going to be the first person that they think of, because you’ve already proven that you can help them. So that’s how content really is a massive driver in your in your marketing and your selling, if you put out content that is actually useful and helpful to your audience.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, I totally agree. Those people that come into my mailbox and sell whatever it is they’re selling, obviously, sometimes they don’t even know me, they don’t know what it is that I want. They are just blindly sending emails or sending DMS without knowing who I am or what it is that I want. And I laugh sometimes. So it is yes, it is very important to know your people. And once you create things that are able to maybe satisfy a desire, they have served them in a way that is useful, and not just serve them because you’re trying to build content, or you’re trying to just put things out there without knowing who your people are, once you are, you’re careful in how you market your content, you are making sure your content is specific to those pain points to those people, then yes, they will come because I have I have seen that. I don’t have the big following that you have
Mildred Talabi
You dont have… people to make that happen, you honestly don’t need to if you’re speaking the language of your audience on a regular basis.
Dr. Sev
Yeah, I agree. Because in just over the last two years, my LinkedIn has grown over 50%, because now I’m more consistent. Number one, and then I’m more targeted in how I what content I put out. So yes, I do believe the method works. So tell us if there’s anything coming up that you would like your listeners right now to support you in whatever it is that you’re you have coming up.
Mildred Talabi
Sure. So um, as I mentioned briefly in passing, I, because this is live, actually the day the date was I am doing my next ABC challenge is called an audience breakthrough challenge. And this is designed for for you, if you feel that you’re constantly speaking to an audience on LinkedIn, that’s not your audience. You know, whether you’re putting out posts, and you’re getting little to no engagement on your posts, or whether you feel like okay, I want to use LinkedIn to build my business, I need to find my target audience, but I don’t know where they are, I don’t know how to start finding them. Or you feel like I need to dip my feet into LinkedIn and start the process of being visible on LinkedIn. But I’m not ready yet for a full coaching program, or you know, just want to kind of test it out, see if this platform is for me see if it was that kind of thing. So my audience breakthrough Challenge is a 30 day challenge, where I will take you through some of the principles that I’ve used to build my audience over the last coming up to four years. And that’s over 50,000 followers in order to build my business. So it is just for 30 days in that 30 days, you get little micro task is with a small group of women. I’m capping the numbers at just 10 women and we kick off on the next one starts on Monday, the ninth of October. So it’s the little mini challenge that you do with the little weekly check ins via zoom in a little cause q&a is you have this small community to grow with you got me in that process. And then you’re gonna have by the end of it, the ability to find connect and engage with your target audience on LinkedIn. So it’s good the ABC challenge you can find out more on my website stop being visible.com forward slash ABC.
Dr. Sev
Okay, awesome. Thank you so much Mildred. Are there any last words that you’d like to wrap up that you think the audience should consider
Mildred Talabi
But I’ve said start be visible so many times because that is my mantra and you know, and the key thing is to start, you know, honestly, don’t put it off for tomorrow. Don’t put it off for the day, but the day after start, be invisible start to date. Start by making a decision that I am going to do this. I’m going to build my personal brand on LinkedIn. I am going to build my business on LinkedIn and you start with that initial decision. take that first step and then from there, the sky is the limit for you.
