Welcome to the show today, today we're going to be talking about, Reveal the surprising power
of the real you. We have um Leonard Kim he is um a digital marketer and is mostly commonly referred
to as the personal branding expert and speaker um he is the author of Ditch the Act reveal the
surprising power of the real you, uh he have written many other books and published many
other books and he's going to share us with us today some strategy in digital marketing.
Mr. Kim, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me it's a pleasure to be here today. Likewise
so it's always great to have people in digital marketing space because they share so much
wealth of knowledge with us especially in the times like where everything is literally digital marketing
right now. Yeah. Yeah, so how did you get into that space of digital marketing? Well it's pretty
interesting uh back in the past I used to do sales but then when I was doing sales the interaction
was one-on-one and I always felt there was a way to go and touch more people at the same time as
opposed to just a one-on-one connection where you could touch thousands if not tens of thousands
if not more at the same time. So I gradually moved into the world of digital marketing.
Okay, that's awesome so all right so what is the story of success you know you talked about in the
book what is the story of success. So success is different for a lot of people I think it's being
able to be able to do what you want when you want to do it and have that financial freedom to do so.
That is so that is so true so when it comes to having that financial freedom do you believe that
there is a great way to have multiple screens of income for those that want to have that financial
freedom? Yeah and the best way to really set it up is to go out there and build your personal
brand because when you focus around building around yourself, for example, Leonard Kim people
recognize and remember the name and whatever you're working with at the time gets associated
to your name, so if you think about like a lot of successful entrepreneurs they're not just in one
category they're in multiple categories and they have like holding companies with like multiple
different things under their name, like Marcus Simonis for example he goes out there and he
fixes companies up but then you don't think of him specifically from one company, you think of him as
a fixture for all types of companies. That's really true that is so true having this most supreme
income is very important I believe just like you have expressed, but what is personal branding
and who should have who should have it? So personal branding is the intersection between how
other people see you and how you see yourself, so if you think about it a lot of people see you a
specific type of way but you see yourself a specific type of way personal branding is when you get
to the intersection in between that. So it's like taking uh the 2 different worlds and combining
them together and making that public so a lot more people are aware of it, and who should have
a personal brand that's next to everyone because we're all in the business world and we're all out
here trying to get better careers, trying to move up in life, we're trying to generate more business.
That's really true, so when it comes to personal branding you know I've um like I said I've talked
to many people in this space do you think that that's kind of like a common thing now
that a lot of people really just personally bring themselves like on any social media platform, is it
all relative in that in that regard. Yeah but I think a lot of people don't do it the right way
a lot of people just play their highlight reel and show their very best moments
but then when have you ever connected to someone, because they kept winning all the time.
That's true. You got to put in some of the failures some of the shortcomings and some of the other
things that have happened in your life as well to kind of mix and match it, so then you become more of
a person and not just a celebrity-type figure which people can't relate to. Right absolutely
that makes perfect sense, what are the benefits for your personal branding yourself?
There's a lot of benefits you get higher career opportunities you get booked you could potentially
write a book with a publisher, you could get speaking engagements that you could get paid for,
You could get job opportunities you could get business opportunities like the potentials are
endless you could get opportunities to travel all around the world, and see things and even do
things that you never even knew were possible. That is so true you know that personal brand is very
important and what is a good personal brand statement to have if you will. I don't know if
there's really a brand statement that people could stand behind, I think it's more behind showcasing
the authentic you getting out there and showing you the true self of who you are is so that's
by going out there and getting the hobbies that you're interested in mixing them in with some of
the business successes and some of the business failures maybe even mixing in some of that
personal life too and making it more of a blend as opposed to just a statement to stand behind.
Okay, so like what does that look like so when someone starting their personal brand themselves
if you will what does that look like what would be one of the first steps they need to do to kind
of like go through their social media platform to kind of start that process to kind of personally
brand themselves. Well I usually have people do is I have them go through an exposure resume and the
exposure resume is kind of like a regular resume, but instead of highlighting all your
accolades and all your successes you're talking about all the struggles and all the things that you
have trouble facing within life, and the reason you do that is because when it comes to successes our
brains are hardwired on to how to do that pretty easily, but when it comes to the failures we're not
really so inclined as to how to go out there and share those. So the reason you need that is because
the very first thing that you need for a personal brand is the bio. Usually when I hop on the
phone with a client I'm like okay tell me about I sit with them on the phone for about an hour
over a recorded line. I'm like tell me about your life childhood what your family was like did
you have family dinners growing up, take me through elementary, junior high, high school
college, your first relationship, your first job, all the way up to where you are today. And with
that exposure resume in mind before they start out with the process they're not just talking about
the very best moments but they're talking about some of their hardships and struggles as well,
and when you combine those together you get a pretty powerful bio that stands out.
The bio's whole purpose is if you think about it people do business with people that they
get to know like and trust, but if they could actually, fall in love with you that's when you
move things to get even further. Even people even get married to you if they fall in love with you.
That's so true, you know what not that you know come think about it you know when it comes to like
branding especially personally on social media, I really noticed that a lot of people really do not
you know expose kind of like the you know the heartaches and the pains of their you know you
know going through regiments seem like they're always having a great time, and so I try not to
follow those people I try to follow people that's really just human-like just like myself you know
go through personal issues and problems and they kind of share them and kind of tell the
story behind it. Do you think those people get a little bit more attraction than those that really
just all about the glam? Yeah, I feel that they do because they're being a little bit more real and a
little bit more authentic with what they're doing and that attracts other people who are just like
us, kind of like what you said you don't follow the people who go out there and have a happy life
all the time, because when you look at it it's not actually relatable how do we connect with
people who are happy all the time when we as human beings aren't happy all the time it just
doesn't make sense for us to be able to gravitate towards them. So we gravitate towards what we're
like and we're all creatures who have mixed emotions and when we see those mixed emotions
presented to another person that's who we naturally gravitate towards. Yeah, that's so true so how do
how do we how how do how do we create our own identity if you will how do we create our own identity
during this process of branding uh so to create your own identity uh one of the things that you could do
is you could get two sets of post-it notes let's say one of them's green and one of them is pink on
the green ones you write one word that describes you on as many of them as possible like maybe
you could buy charming funny uh you know anything like hockey things like that and you get the
other set the pink ones and you pass it out to friends and you have them write one word on it and
you mix it up so they don't know what word they're writing on there and then you start combining them
together you'll get things that uh you see in yourself that other people don't see in you you'll get
things that other people see in you that you don't see in yourself you'll get things that both of you
see together now the bad thing is if you say that you're like funny or something and you write that
on the card but no one else says you're funny chances are you're probably not funny and it's
just something that you think so you have to go and you have to realize what the intersection is
and that's the gap that you need to fill plus what other people see you as the unrealized uh
is unrealized as an unrealized personal brand that you have that other people are seeing through you
but you're not seeing yourself. So why isn't it so why is it so important to like brand ourselves?
Well if you think about it things are moving more and more digital as time goes by and um
sometime in the future our direct representation of who we are is going to be made on the internet
so the more personal branding that we have up there the better it's going to be once uh the
world progresses to that point, so what is a what do a good so what is a good branding strategies
look like? A good branding strategy is a content play where uh there's three main forms of three
main forms of content there's audio there's visual and there's written so you could decide on exactly
what you want to do uh some people decide to go out there and make videos and YouTube channel
that would be one way to go other people would go out there and have the written word such as
myself because I'm more of a writer than someone who's uh getting on camera and some people would
like to go with audio into the Podcast so if you're taking one of those three routes down then you
should have a pretty good chance of building your personal brand fortunately for the people who are
good at video they could also transcribe their content and turn it into audios or the audio
into the written word so people who are good at video have the benefit of creating a written
word at the same time without too much effort because it could all just get translated down.
All right so you know you're creating the brand for yourself, you're trying to put yourself
out there um and you're trying to like have this strategy so you can kind of create this image of
you to be more human-like on social media um in the long run, do you believe that this will
be the strategy that everyone will kind of look kind of adhere to at some point um in their lives?
Yeah as time progresses we've already seen a lot of jobs go out there and move to working at home
people are making face-to-face interactions less and less and um sure that might be
because of the pandemic but it's also it's also trickled down to an effect where more
people have been spending time at home, and more people have been kind of focusing on
being online and things and it's kind of shifted the world in a way, where more things
have been going out there people are building work from home environments where you have a
virtual office all in the computer and you have an avatar go and walk you through everywhere and
you have office buildings in the avatar world as well, as things go by personal branding is
going to become more and more important, because people are going to need to recognize who
you are especially for like jobs and careers or if you want to go out there and build a business
it's even more important because that's the way people are going to be able to discover you and
your products and services. That is really so true, so tell us Mr. Kim how can we locate you
and find you to learn more about who you are in your books and all the different successes.
Sure so my website is leonardkim.com my business's website is influencetree.com my books
website is ditchtheact.com and I have a course that I'm coming out with if you go to
g3brandingformula/masterclass you can take a personal branding course that teaches you
everything that you need to know about personal branding. Awesome, thank you Mr. Kim for joining us
we definitely appreciate it. Well anytime thank you so much for having me it was a pleasure.
All right next IBS.