My Literary Agent Demanded 20000 Followers Before She'd Sell My Book

Sean Weisbrot: Welcome back to another episode of the We Live to Build podcast. Whether we like it or not, personal branding is one of the most important things you need to be thinking about as an entrepreneur. A poorly developed and poorly managed personal brand might cost you opportunities or destroy your chances at starting a successful business. A poorly developed but well-managed personal brand might confuse people as to who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. A well-developed but poorly managed personal brand might waste your time and offer the wrong opportunities. A well-developed and well-managed personal brand will get you the right traction in a timely manner and on a low-cost budget.

Sean Weisbrot: Our guest today is Stacey Ross Cohen, the founder and CEO of Co-Communications, a personal branding firm that specializes in executives, entrepreneurs and especially CEOs. Co-Communications delivers high-impact, targeted communications programs to local and national clients across diverse industries including real estate, education, healthcare, nonprofit, hospitality, information technology and professional services.

Sean Weisbrot: Stacey is a regular contributor to Huffington Post and has been featured in a variety of national and local publications, including Entrepreneur Magazine, Crain's Sales and Marketing, and most recently, Inside Chappaqua.

Sean Weisbrot: We discussed why is she so passionate about personal branding. Why is it necessary to have a personal brand? How can you refine your personal brand? What is my personal brand? How to develop a consistent personal brand? What are the right channels for you to focus your energy, how to make your content get discovered, and much more.

Sean Weisbrot: What it is you do right now that makes you the right person to be talking about this with you?

Stacey Cohen: I have been building brands for CEO business owners and entrepreneurs for about 25 years. You can call it thought leadership. I like to consider myself the thought leader of thought leadership. And it's about figuring out the expertise or the IT factor of, of an individual, then packaging that and then delivering it to their target audience. If you think about thought leadership, it could be in the way of speaking opportunities. It could be in the way of getting quoted on media, creating your own blog. So, there's a lot of different tactics to get your personal brand out.

Sean Weisbrot: So, you brought up something really interesting, and I do want to go and touch on that point in a little bit. But before we do that, I want you to tell me what is a personal brand and why is it necessary to cultivate a personal brand?

Stacey Cohen: A personal brand is really about your passions, your experience, achievements, your values. And a lot of people, you know, get personal branding mistaken or confused. And, you know, they think it's about like me, me, me. But when in fact it's really about what is your value to others? How can you benefit others? And it requires an audit, you know, really digging deep into yourself and understanding what is your wow, what is your standout factor? And then it really applies to anything and everything. And it comes down to the question, why should someone choose you over someone else?

Stacey Cohen: And it could be, if you're in business, why should someone choose you over your business? Or if you're in your climbing the career ladder? Why should someone choose you for a certain position or a promotion? So again, it's all about what your value is to others, and it also requires a deep understanding of your target audience, you know, and understanding the what's in it for them. It's really digging deep and truly understanding your value. And I want to emphasize one word. It's “authentic”. You're not giving people what you think they want to hear because that just will not translate well. It's about giving others your true self.

Sean Weisbrot: You threw out a few questions there that are really good, that people could be thinking about, for how they can figure out what their personal brand should be, but how can they take the answers to those questions and use it to refine something that is polished, that they can go out into the world and then say, so for example, I did a branding identity exercise with a marketing consultant, and once we went through that exercise, it was so obvious to me about how I should be talking about my company. But before I did that exercise, I was so lost and nobody understood what I was trying to do. Now everybody gets it and they love it. It's such a magical thing. Obviously, this is about your expertise, so how do you suggest people go out and refine it?

Stacey Cohen: Good for you. I'm so happy to hear that you went through the exercise yourself and you see the benefit. Obviously, the process is pretty much the same across the board. You know, I break it into three steps. It's the discovery and then it's the development of and I don't want this to sound like a commodity, but it's really the development of your marketing assets, if you will. So, it could be anything from an online profile to your website. And then the third is, is delivery being your own news channel. So, to stay with the discovery a little bit, if you think about marketing oneself you really need to go through a number of exercises.

Stacey Cohen: First of all, you have to figure out what your objectives are short-term and long-term. Because clearly when you were working with this consultant, you needed to have an objective in mind. You were point A, but what did point B look like? What did you want to achieve? Did you want to achieve academic career success? Start a business. You also need to figure out again your superpower. Here's the tricky part. And again, a lot of this is self-awareness. The crazy thing is, a lot of us are not truly self-aware. You would like to think that we are, but we are not. Here's the crazy thing about self-awareness, it's not just an exercise for you. You really need to do a 360, and you need to speak to your friends and business colleagues, and you have to understand what their perception is of you. It is critical.

Stacey Cohen: It's not- It's not always a comfortable thing to do because a lot of people don't like others. Well, how do you perceive me? You know, what do you think my strengths are? You know, what are my weaknesses, you know, would you hire me for this position? You know, what kind of career do you think would be best for me? And just, like, really listening, and I can't emphasize listening. Don't gloss over it. Listening to others is as equally important as going internal and doing this self-audit and thinking about who am I, you know, what are my superpowers? How do I stand out from others in my field? And really giving that a lot of thought? Once you have these two components, you also need to look at your competitors and everybody has competitors, you know, and I don't care who it is, you have to look at your competition and you have to look at their positioning in the marketplace. And only then you have crystallized yours. In marketing, we call it unique value proposition or competitive advantage. You've also heard from your business colleagues and friends who have given you a lot of insight into perception. There's going to be an overlap there, and only then can you truly put your stake in the ground.

Stacey Cohen: You know, so you have to really spend time here, crystallize it, put your stake in the ground, and then also develop what we call key messages, 3 to 5 key messages of why someone should choose you over your competitors. It's definitely a process. It's not an easy process. It really takes hard work. But you can't skip over this because that's the problem. I find so many people see like that shiny penny, and they just want to jump into the tactics and they want to create their own podcast or blog without figuring out the initial phase, because you've got to build a foundation. If you don't, what ends up happening is you end up back peddling.

Sean Weisbrot: I love what you just said. There's so many points where I was just smiling and cheering. So, I went through a self-audit. When I was in college. At the time I was studying psychology, I started to ask everybody that I knew of varying degrees of familiarity from I don't know you to family. I asked them, what do you think about me? What are, you know, what are the things you like about me? What are the things you don't like about me? And I was shocked at how many people actually really didn't like certain parts of my personality that they all saw, that I didn't realize I was doing those things. Some of the things I was saying and doing without realizing I was doing, it was actually quite hurtful to a lot of people, and was a reason why some of them didn't want to get closer to me. And it wasn't until after I learned that I started to realize, like, oh, I should probably think a little bit more before I say something, and I should be careful with the tone that I use when I say it. And once I started to be more aware of that, I found that my relationships with them improved.

Sean Weisbrot: Relationships I built with people after that also improved because I was less hurtful in the things that I said and did. So yeah, that was fantastic. Self-awareness is something I'm a huge proponent of, and I think that if a leader is not self-aware, they will not succeed. And if they do succeed, which, okay, I can't say they won't succeed because some people are not self-aware like Mark Zuckerberg, and they do succeed out of sheer luck, I think. Might be the word. Um, and coming up with key messages. So, a lot of the points you talked about were also kind of what I experienced doing the, uh, branding identity for the company. So, uh, personal branding and corporate branding are actually very similar because we came up with, like, what are the core values of the company and therefore what are the key messages we should be using based on expressing those values to potential customers?

Sean Weisbrot: And another exercise that a former advisor of mine and I went through when we were trying to figure out how to kind of brand me, was like, start with 15 words about who you are and what you do, and then take that and figure out how to turn it into 30 words, and then take that and turn it into 60 words and turn that into 90 words and 120 words. And then you have different ways of expressing to different people who you are and what you're doing based on how much they really care about reading about you. And so, I think that's another interesting side point. When I was living in China, I noticed that they love stories. They love crafting stories about people. They call it bao zhuang, like to package somebody. That was a fascinating, uh, experience for me as well, learning about this obsession for them and how I could do it. And I was quite good at packaging myself, uh, when I was dealing with people in China in business. And so, I think that was also very helpful for me after I left China doing business globally.

Stacey Cohen: I agree with you. It is about packaging yourself just like you would package a business. The word packaging could be off putting, but it truly is. What it is. What I really like is that you understood your target audience and you understood what we call in marketing with us. So, with them is like, what's in it for me? So, in other words, like, if I want to sell you this microphone, I have to understand why it would be of a value to you. So, they're selling features versus benefits. I could say it's a really pretty color. Silver. And the company was established in 1995. But really I will make a bigger impact if I say to you, hey, this will make you have the highest quality sounding podcast ever. So, it's really getting into benefits and much better to sell yourself or a product or service based on benefits. And what is in it for your target audience.

Sean Weisbrot: I guess building the podcast as an example, I knew that I wanted to build something where the target audience was also the ideal early adopter of my company's product, so I developed the podcast with that in mind, so that I could then go out and find the people I wanted to interview who would be of interest to the people who wanted to listen, because I knew that it would be something of value for them, that they're probably not hearing anywhere else, and therefore they would be more likely to trust me as a person because I'm finding these people, I'm having these conversations, I'm sharing my experience and learning from the guests and sharing this back with the audience. And then, by the way, I also have a company. You should check it out.

Stacey Cohen: That is brilliant. I would outline that as one of your objectives. Remember, part of the exploratory or discovery process is defining what your objectives are, and there is nothing wrong with that. It's all right because we all have an end goal. And the other thing is, is I love what you said before. There's so many parallels between building your own brand versus a company brand. They're really not very different if you think about it. And here's the other thing. I've given a lot of talks. The CEO as a brand asset, when you have a business and the business has a good brand, and then you have like a CEO or business owner that has a really powerful brand, that's when one plus one is equal to three. And there was a time, and it wasn't that long ago that the CEO hid in his ivory tower. But that doesn't happen now. It's like it's so important to humanize brands.

Stacey Cohen: And that's why personal branding is more important than ever. And there's been all these studies that CEOs that do have human, likable, strong brands can attract more talented employees, more investment opportunity opportunities, more strategic opportunities, both personal and business branding build credibility. Why is anyone going to buy something, whether it be a product or service? It's purchase decisions. 80% of them are built on emotion. So, in order to get someone to trust your company, you have to get them to like and engage with you first. So, your point of inviting guests to your show is that you are building a relationship. And building relationships is a very important part of personal branding and building out your network.

Sean Weisbrot: Another thing is that the guests are also ideal early adopters of my platform. So, I'm building relationships with them and with the audience, and everybody is all just having a good time.

Stacey Cohen: May I ask you a question? Is that okay? I'm just curious. What do you think was the most effective way for you to build your personal brand?

Sean Weisbrot: I actually became aware of the idea of a personal brand, probably in 2013, and at the time I was becoming an HR manager for a private school in China, and I was helping the company establish itself and expand and hiring better quality teachers and creating different processes and things like that. On the side, I was trying to figure out how I was going to do something in this new city, because I had been living in central China and I had just moved down to southern China. So, I literally knew nobody in this part of the country. So, I had to do something to make myself unique eventually.

Sean Weisbrot: And I told the story many times. So, I won't go into details here, but I got fired from that job because of an accident, and I ended up falling into a position where I started an event company with somebody else. That person got busy. They couldn't continue, I started my girlfriend picked up the slack on for that person, and we grew it to be quite successful socially, not financially, unfortunately. And in the process, I was starting to write blog articles about personal growth and development, and I was interviewing the people who were going to be giving speeches at the event. And I kind of started a podcast where I was interviewing them in long form.

Sean Weisbrot: So, to kind of promote their speech, these kinds of things, and at the height, we had over 10,000 followers across China, even though it was a live event, so only the people near us could attend. But we had fans across the country, which was really cool. And what made it even bigger was that it was 100% in English. Even though I'm fluent in Chinese, we did 100% in English because it was something that the people wanted. They wanted something that a high level in English that was intellectually stimulating, and we gave them that. And so that kind of became my brand. And then when I stopped doing that and I started getting into corporate training and other kinds of things, I kept doing the articles, I kept doing this stuff.

Sean Weisbrot: And so, the company I formed then was called Benue me. And I was talking about personal growth and development, positive psychology, emotional intelligence, empathy, cross-cultural communications, these kinds of topics. It's and it's quite similar to what I'm doing with the podcast. But the audience is different. Where I used to target individuals who were English speaking in China, now it's company owners globally.

Sean Weisbrot: So, the personal brand I was establishing, which I carry with me, you know, almost a decade later, is I am this person who is very curious, very empathetic, well-educated, well-traveled, multilingual, capable of learning anything that you can throw at me. Love to share. Everything that I learned with other people, loves to challenge people and encourage them to grow themselves. And that's who I am. And we live to build is an expression of that. It actually took me five minutes to come up with that name, and it's a long name. It's maybe a weird name, but it's very clear we are people who live to build. We build companies, we build things. That's what we do. It's who we are. And so, I felt that was an easy extension of myself and an expression of my personal brand.

Stacey Cohen: First of all, thank you for sharing that with me. What's so interesting is that the reason why it was so easy for you to name your company is because you had done that self-audit and you know, you really understood who you are and your purpose and what you do best. You bring up another great point because personal brands are mobile, we take them where we go.

Stacey Cohen: You know, one of the best examples. And for whatever reason, I often talk to real estate agents about their personal brand. If you think about it, it's almost as if they have their own business within a brokerage, and it could be a brokerage of 100,000 real estate agents. How do they stand out? And it's quite often also, you'll see a real estate agent go from one major brokerage to another.

Stacey Cohen: Personal branding is not a luxury, but it's a requirement. Someone who is making a home purchase or wants to sell their home, they need to know and very quickly why. If they're deciding between 2 or 3 agents, why should I choose this agent over or over the other ones? So again, everyone has to be a master of first impressions. You know, as you and I both know, and I'm sure you've heard this statistic that Americans have an attention span of like eight seconds. So, you know, you have to get your point across very quickly. And otherwise, you know, people will just turn off.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'll give you another example of how I use this to my advantage. And hopefully, this is interesting for people to hear as well. I've said this many times, I'm fluent in Mandarin, and it took me years of living in China to really get to a near native level. Now the reality is I am not at a ninth-grade level. I'm like maybe a seventh or eighth grade. So, if you compare me to a native, my Chinese is shit. But if you compare me to everyone that's not a native, it's really good. Putting that aside, I am native enough that I can have fluent, long-form conversations about many different topics, including business of different kinds.

Sean Weisbrot: So, with that said, I used that to convince people in China to introduce me to business owners that were Chinese, who didn't speak English, who trusted them as a consultant that could help them, and in doing so. I was able to transfer that company owner's trust in that person over to me and was very, very successful at it for several years until I decided to stop and start do a startup instead. I knew that my game was, you don't understand the West, you don't speak English, but you want to work with the West. I'm a white guy. I speak your language, I understand your culture, and I can help you get what you want. And I'm the only person that you will ever find who can help you get what you want.

Stacey Cohen: I love that because it doesn't take that long to communicate that you could, of course just say I speak Chinese fluently or, you know, but you also show that you had an expertise in a geographic area of interest to them. So again, you got out there. What's in it for me very quickly, not surprising that it was a success, but also it's like you started to build a network. I'm constantly asked by clients as a marketer, how do I get more clients? Or if it's a health care, how do I get more patients? If it's a nonprofit, how do I get more donors? And I'll always put up the stop sign and say first, tell me about your existing client or donor base because they are really your pot of gold. You know they are the ones that trust you and like you. So, I love that you asked your trusted network who already knew you to make introductions rather than, you know, going about it cold.

Sean Weisbrot: And of course I offered them very nice commissions. So that was motive, you know, motivation for them. So, you figured out who you are. How do we develop?

Stacey Cohen: It's interesting. Remember the adjectives that you just threw at me. You want to take those adjectives and make sure that you build these keywords or phrases into your various touch points. So, whether it's your LinkedIn profile or your website or blog, you have to think of every single touchpoint, even an email, the signature line that's valuable space. You want to also understand, like during this phase, because you're not communicating, just like you're not pushing out the information yet, but you're starting to develop content. Content can't just be good, it has to be great. The same reason why, like an average product does not work, it has to be great. It has to resonate with the target audience. So, the content also has to reach the target audience. If you want to reach millennials, for example, you're not going to be on Facebook. You really need to start drilling down to a content calendar. And also, you have to think about your bandwidth. You can't do everything.

Stacey Cohen: So, for myself, I'll give you an example. You know, I'm in the process of writing a book on personal branding when I hired a literary agent. I'm great at marketing others, as is my company and also brands. But when it comes to myself, I let my social platforms like just lay on the back burner. But she said to me, I am not shopping your book until you have at least 20,000 followers on each of your platforms. And then I had also thought about it because I love to write, and why not start developing content right then and there? So, I reached out to Arianna Huffington. I happen to have a direct line into her. I gave her a sample of my writing, and I focused it just on personal branding. And I have to tell you that authorship is great to build credibility. So is speaking. So, I started to do both during this stage, identify what is going to resonate with your target audience and build credibility as a result of starting to write for Huffington Post and and getting great engagement, I was able to interview some powerhouses. I interviewed Gary Kelly, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, the Property Brothers, and the list goes on. It was just a door opener to so many of opportunities. So, this development stage is getting all of your assets ready to push out there and use on your various channels. It's also building a website.

Stacey Cohen: I personally feel that everybody should own their you are out. You know, sometimes it's a little challenging. You know, if you have the name like John Smith, you probably can't get it. Stacey Cohen is a very common name. I was very smart going back about 18 years ago. I purchased my URL, but then I also realized that there's so many Stacey Cohen. So, I now, for personal branding purposes, go for Stacey Ross Cohen because everyone has a digital footprint. You've got to Google yourself because you've got to own your digital footprint. You know, when you invite a guest that might not know you to your podcast, that they are just doing a Google search? It's almost instinctual now. So, you have to make sure you have a strong digital footprint. Once you get into the distribution stage to really up what people see when they search your name.

Sean Weisbrot: I totally agree, googling yourself is simultaneously extremely scary and extremely important. I haven't done that in a long time. I probably should do it. So, thank you for the reminder. So, once you understand what your persona is, who you're talking to, then I guess you have to prepare for developing yourself socially on different channels so that you can then prepare for the delivery of the content. So, let's focus in on this side.

Stacey Cohen: This is where you're going to showcase your value. As you know, you really need to make sure that your social channels and other profiles are consistent. You really want to show your best self, even if you look at, let's just say, your bio or profile. You know you want to make every word count. And even some of the adjectives that we spoke about in the conversation earlier, you may even want to develop like a long bio, which is about 300 words, or a short bio, which is about 100 words. You just want to have these like assets in your back pocket. And you know, you want to make sure that you include, like any designations or achievements, awards and show your personality. Be human. You need a really good headshot. When I say, of course, a selfie type of headshot, I always have a laugh, but you really need a great photograph.

Stacey Cohen: You may also want to develop a website when you look at your social media platforms, I'd rather see a quality over quantity. So, we all need to be realistic of, you know, what we can maintain. And also of course. Have a good understanding of where your target audience is. That's where you want to spend most of your time. I mean, you're essentially looking to become the go to source for information. And so, you know, I would even say that before you deliver, start developing some useful content. At this stage in the game, I have so much content develop that if I was asked by a media outlet, let's say, could you write an article on blah blah blah? I could repurpose a lot of the content that I have. So. So you want to have a lot of content.

Stacey Cohen: The last thing is, you know, just again, the investment of the social channels that you use, you just want to make sure that you're choosing the channels with the biggest return on investment and engagement. The content is key. I also want to just talk about visuals for a second. I don't know if you've heard about any of these studies, Sean, but there's actually been studies that if you take information and send it out just with the information, it's 10% recall. However, if you take that information and if you pair it with a visual, it's 60%, you really want to make sure that you're using visuals in all of your content.

Sean Weisbrot: So, I hadn't heard of that specific statistic. However, I am definitely aware of the fact that people are highly visual. It's how we evolved, and it's how we survive. Being able to pick out the information we need to know about our surroundings in order to make decisions that allow us to not die. Essentially, in modern society, obviously we're less likely to be making those kinds of decisions on a consistent basis. However, the correlation exists in that regard. I always will have an image with my podcast link, so I'll say something like, I don't know if you've looked at my Twitter, but I'll be like, hey, uh, meet Stacey Cohen. She helps people figure out their personal brands. And today she's going to give you tips and tricks on how you can establish and cement your own personal brand. Here are some bullet points where you talk about, uh, here's the link that you can do it. And here's an image of her. And like the name of the title and like the website. My brand is that standard, and that's what I do. If you look, if you see an episode, that's how I promote my episode. Every episode is the same structure with an image.

Stacey Cohen: I see that, and it's great because it has to be consistent and it doesn't matter. Again, if it's a personal brand or a business brand. Like if I could show you for my company Co communications, our tagline is “Make yourself perfectly clear”. It's all about clarity and message. You know, we have clear business cards. You go on the website and everything you know picks up the word clear, clear success, clear results. Again, you want to be able to carry that through to create consistency so people form an image very quickly.

Sean Weisbrot: You were talking about focusing in on the channels with the most ROI. So how does one figure out what are the right channels they should be on in order to maximize their ROI? And should they still create accounts for platforms or for channels in which they know there is no ROI?

Stacey Cohen: I think it depends. It's really on a case-by-case basis. I mean, look, there are basic accounts that I believe that everyone should have LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. However, I think it's more of a question of frequency and where you're going to spend most of your time. For instance, my channel of choice is linked in. Yours may be Instagram. It's about frequency, but if you are going to have a Facebook page, don't let it stay dormant and how you would know which of the channels to emphasize, let's say is it really depends on your target audience. What demographic are you trying to reach? Are you trying to reach, you know, the Gen Z population, you're trying to reach baby boomers. There also might be different messages. Let's say that someone was almost like age-agnostic in their offerings. The messaging that they're putting through to the Gen Z or millennials is going to be very different than, you know, than baby boomers. So again, you've got to get inside your target audience's mind and understand what is of value to them. What information can I share that will benefit them? It's always about your audience. It's never about like, you know, like I said, me, me, me. It's about what value can you bring them.

Stacey Cohen: And, you know, just in terms of return on engagement, you'll know if the information that you're posting is a value to them because you'll hopefully see engagement.

Sean Weisbrot: I've been thinking about, I guess, my own podcast as an example, and so hopefully I can turn this into a better question that I'm thinking of in my head right now. Essentially, I have LinkedIn, I have Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and I post on all of them. But what I post is just. Here's another episode, right? My my my post. That's all I do. There is no other further engagement. I'm not adding people. I'm not creating viral memes. I don't have time for that. Right? I'm in the business of creating content that is valuable to entrepreneurs. You can post until the cows come home, but most of the time your content doesn't get discovered. I would say a large number of people create content, put it out there and it takes years to be discovered, if ever. So- so how can people create this content that's valuable? Put it on the channels that are right for them that that can maximize their ROI, but then get discovered in the process. So they're actually not wasting their time in developing this content.

Stacey Cohen: That is the million-dollar question. And you bring up a really good point, because I always talk about diversification of content. Let's just say you're an architect. You don't want to just post about your awards. You want a diversification of content. So, some of it should be educational, some of it could be entertaining. And some of it, of course, could be self-promotional. But the other part is curating, taking other people's posts, and commenting and sharing. If you think about it, social media, it's totally a give-and-take relationship. And you know what the time investment, it's very difficult to do it right. But it's also about building relationships. So, for example, let's just say that your content was well-being that your content is relevant to, let's say, entrepreneurs. Maybe there's an entrepreneur group within LinkedIn, you know, so join a group and share content there. So, it's not just through your channels, find other channels.

Stacey Cohen: And again, it's diversification of content but also diversification of channels and giving back. And in a sense, you know, it's like to build your fan base, you give them relevant valuable information but also give them shout-outs, you know. So, if, let's say someone from Forbes writes an article about you, you know, you of course don't want to just post the article. You want to give the reporter a shout-out thing just thinking about it. Like as a two-way street, of course, there's your organic and then there's paid. You know, maybe you want to boost a LinkedIn post or a Facebook post, and that can also get you more interest and, you know, engagement. It's an art and it's a science. Contribute to a media outlet. Some of them pay, some of them don't. You can just get on a platform like medium. Actually. They pay you like a penny. Maybe you get a penny a post, but again, it's another way to get yourself out there. So it could be, you know, video sending out news releases and just looking at maybe some more traditional channels other than just social.

Sean Weisbrot: Because I run a company and the podcast and the social media presence that I personally have is for the podcast. And I already put 50 or 60 hours a month into the podcast. I just don't have the time to be engaging with people on any of these social platforms and looking at their content and like, I just, I don't have time to comment on things or to read what people are saying. But in terms of kind of syndication, as you would call it, I do have a platform in Singapore that shares one of my episodes a week with their thousands of followers, and routinely have over a thousand people look at it based on their promotion. I do get a number of people that reach out to me and all that, and I actually I just got someone emailing me today saying, hey, I'm from this platform that gives you analytics about your podcasts. And I just wanted to let you know that you rank 59 in Singapore. I was like, okay, cool. But like how many of them are there like.

Stacey Cohen: 59 out of if it's right, if it's 59 out of like 60, or is it 59 out of like a million? But see even that you know, so you have like a nugget like let's just say it is 100,000. That's like a nugget of information that you can also get out and post on your LinkedIn because it's elevating you, and it's also elevating your podcast as well.

Sean Weisbrot: See that? That's the thing about me, like those kinds of things I don't feel are worth sharing with people. Like, let me say it like this. People very easily post pictures of what they're eating and where they're going. And to me, sharing that like I'm ranked 59, like it feels like, that I'm when I have a one-on-one conversation with someone, I'm happy to say, like, whatever, I don't, I don't. I live through blunt honesty. I don't really keep secrets from any stranger, really. I'm an open book to the world, but at the same time, I don't like the idea of self-promotion in terms of here's a picture of me doing something. Yeah, or like I just I'm very private in that sense, but very public in many other things.

Stacey Cohen: You have to pick and choose, because one of the most annoying things that I find is, you see these people or companies that all they talk about is themselves and their awards, and they were on this show and that show. You don't want to be, you know, narcissistic, but it is also a great nugget. Maybe you don't want to share it on your social platforms, but maybe you want to throw it on your website, you know, with a little icon or logo. And I respect your privacy, but also you have to look at what is good for the brand and the business.

Sean Weisbrot: You mentioned speaking. And when I was trying to build my career in China, I did a lot of speaking. Some of it was free, and some of it was paid. Uh, when it was paid, it was great. I enjoyed testing their desire to pay me. And so, the first time someone wanted me to talk for an hour, I was like, all right, uh, what about $15? And they're like, here you go, $15. So, I was like, okay, next time someone asked me, all right, give me $30 because I'm thinking in Chinese currency. So, it's like 100 R&B, 200 R&B. So, I was going up in increments in their currency, but in dollars, it's like $15 per 100. The next time I was like, okay, we'll give me, uh, 60, I'm like, okay, next time. I was like, all right, give me 100. So, I basically every time someone said yes, I just I kept asking for more each time to a point where I once was paid $1,500 for a 20-minute talk.

Stacey Cohen: You could easily add zeros on, um, to that. Seriously, you know what? But that all has to do. You have to build your brand. What you're talking about monetizing your brand. You know, even if you look at speaking engagement speakers that get paid and I've worked with many, you know, that get paid $25,000 plus they have already assets package. So, they'll typically have like a speaker's bio, they'll have a sizzle reel. You know, they'll have all of these things assembled. And in some cases, they're in various like speaker bureaus. And some of them even have agents like, look at you. That could even ultimately be a different revenue stream for you.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I haven't really given speeches in years. I stopped doing it when I left China and I was like 25, 26 at that time. So, I didn't understand my value. So, I was just testing the waters and trying to see how I could make money in any way possible. Now I would definitely add zeros for sure, but what I found was even better than being a speaker. Was being the founder of a speaking event platform. There's so many people that want to promote themselves, but when you're the person that people go to- to promote themselves, you are instantly elevated to a higher status.

Stacey Cohen: Without a doubt, you get it because it really starts with you. And the biggest part about delivery is that you have to become your own news channel, and you've got to make noise, you've got to share it. You cannot just turn up the volume and walk away. You need that constant drumbeat. So that's why, you know, getting back to your social channels, you can't just post on, you know, LinkedIn or Instagram two times a year that is going to do nothing for you. So again, you need to always start with a roadmap, a content strategy, carve out how much time is reasonable to maintain it, or if you can't maintain it, get someone that can help you with it.

Stacey Cohen: But of course, they need to get your voice, because at the end of the day, it's always about transparency or being authentic, and people can smell someone that's not authentic 100 miles away. I would also say that also part of the delivery. It's really like simple stuff. So, it's also delivering on your brand and you have to be responsible. If I had to sum up the most important thing with content delivery, it's that I always use these four words to add value, not clutter.

Sean Weisbrot: There is a TV show I saw recently. The main villain has this question that he asks everybody that works for him every day, that is. Or what have you done today to deserve your place in the world? And it's really dark because, uh, he, he almost forces people to justify their existence in other ways. Like he's. Yeah, he's a villain. So, think about the repercussions.

Stacey Cohen: I love it. I think the great thing about the pandemic is that it's been a great time for many to do a lot of self-reflection and become more self-aware and work on their personal brand. It's never too late, and personal branding is really for life. I advocate that it should be taught in high schools across the world.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, I think there's a lot of things that should be taught, like personal finance, emotional intelligence, empathy, you know, to name a few. But who knows if that'll ever happen. So, what's something I haven't asked you yet that you wished I would ask?

Stacey Cohen: why I'm so passionate about personal branding.

Sean Weisbrot: Okay. What does it mean to you?

Stacey Cohen: Well, it's interesting, I'm actually a twin, so if you think about it, when you come into this world as a singleton, you're a me. When you come into this world as a twin, you're away. Looking back on my childhood, my sister and I didn't even have a name. It was. It was not Stacey and Shari. It was like the twins. So, I had to fight so hard to form my own identity. And I understand the importance of it, that it's just become part of my core. Just because you're a twin or just because you may believe that you're not truly unique. Everyone has a personal brand. It's just a matter of it's either positive, neutral, or negative. Look inside and figure out what your superpower is and share the value of your superpower with others.

Sean Weisbrot: It reminds me of two friends of mine that are also twins. They're fraternal twins. Their names are Alfred and Richard, and they also probably struggled with being called the twins. They never alluded to that, but they may have internalized it at some point.

Stacey Cohen: Think about it, because twins share everything together. You know, we shared a room, we shared friends, people would give us for birthdays. It's things that others don't think of like because they didn't want the other one to get jealous. It would be like the same exact gift. Maybe it would be in a different color. So, it's all those types of things that just like push you further along to say I need to be my own self, but I feel like everybody should feel like that, not just a twin.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, and they definitely developed their own personalities and their own style of clothing and things like that. In college, when they got a chance to leave their home, then they were able to start developing their own identities for sure. So how can people follow up with you?

Stacey Cohen: I have so many different ways. I'm happy to share my email. SCohen, S-C-O-H-E-N at Co-Communications no dash com. You can follow me on Instagram at Stacey Ross Cohen also LinkedIn. And also, you know, just on the topic of twins, I did do a Ted x talk and you can find out from the Ted x talk if I'm fraternal or identical.