Hannah Power is a personal branding specialist who focuses on supporting purpose driven entrepreneurs and experts to become powerful online leaders.

• Has been immersed in the world of personal branding since she was six when her parents set up the first online business network.
• Two sides to her business: one side is about coaching and training and the other is an agency where they offer done for you services.
• Her agency does content creation and content sharing on social media and content collation platforms like YouTube
• Hannah is the author of the book - The Power of You, which helps inspire anybody to build their personal brand.
• Hannah's methodology comprises the seven core components of powerful personal branding. Her Scorecard helps you assess your personal brand to understand how well developed it is www.hannahpower.co.uk
•  Brands Hannah admires are:
  •  Gabby Bernstein
  •   Gary Vaynerchuk
  • Dr Joe Dispenza
  • Simon Sinek
  • Jeff Bezos
  • Steve Jobs
  • Bill Gates
  •  Accenture

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Shireen: Hannah power is a personal branding specialist focused on supporting purpose driven entrepreneurs and experts to become powerful online leaders. Hannah's passion for personal branding started in 2012, and has become her full time focus in 2018. With the creation of powerful leaders, which delivers personal branding, coaching and training, and power studios, a personal branding agency, Hannah works with people to build strong, engaging brands, which share a message and inspire an audience. Her clients include entrepreneurs, coaches, corporate directors, and her own mom, Penny power OB Hannah's goal is to inspire and teach as many people as possible to step into their light, share their message and lead their tribe. Hello, welcome to the Brand Tuned podcast. It's wonderful to have you here.

Hannah: Wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.

Shireen: Tell me how did you get into personal branding? You know, let me know a bit more about your background and how that came about?

Hannah: Sure. So so it's a good question. So I am, I was born into the kind of world of personal branding. My parents started the first online business network when I was six. So I very much grew up around the world of having an online profile people who were writing books speaking at events, and you know, building those personal brand based leadership businesses. So there was always something which it was kind of how I I saw the world is that being the normal way to do things, because that was all I'd ever known. And I always took an active interest in it, I went and did a law degree. And I worked in a corporate consulting firm, called Accenture. And it was always something I did on the side I used to work with, with people outside of work, or there were some MDS at Accenture that I worked with, to help them to grow their brands to be seen as leaders in their fields. So it was always sort of my, my skill, that was always my sort of extra skill that I used to bring to roles that that I had. And then when I left my job and moved abroad to Bali, I started my first business and it just made sense to focus in on the niche of personal branding, to, you know, I knew there was so much demand for this, but there wasn't really that much understanding and how to do it and how to do it effectively. So it kind of seems a natural move for me, but also for how I could best serve serve the world.

Shireen: That's great. So I've got a good idea from your bio, that you don't really believe in personal branding, being about superficial cosmetic surface stuff like logos. So what is personal branding to you?

Hannah: So to me, we all have a personal brand, the act of personal branding is actually actively looking to, to manage and lead that brand. And to me, being a strong personal brand. And building a powerful personal brand is about serving others, it's about having a really strong clear message, a really strong clear niche and a really strong, clear audience of the people that you want to serve and building your brand around that. So it's not a good personal brands have logos but it's not about being salesy. Being self promotional having shiny collateral, it's about really standing for something, and sharing that message with the world.

Shireen: And so why is personal branding important nowadays?

Hannah: Well, I mean, I had a different question answer to this question a few months ago, because before it was very much about, you know, the world moving online, and it's about if you're not known for the thing that you're excellent at, you know, if you can't be found on Google, if you don't have any presence online, you know, who are you really in the world that we're in now, where, you know, we do really expect to be able to find whatever we need at the click of a button. And if you're not there, when people are clicking that button, you know, where are you? So it was? That was always my answer to that question. And then I think, you know, it's also about the opportunities that come from having a personal brand, if you're seen as a leader and an expert in your industry, in your field, whatever that might be, whether that's something business related, or just a passion that you have, you're going to increase those opportunities that you can have that impact that you can have on the world. So those are always my answers to that question until, obviously, the world's completely changed now and everything really is online. So I think now it's even more of a need. Now that we don't have that kind of people centered approach and who knows where they are face to face approach who knows where the world is going to go? You know, in terms of events, and networking, and all of that kind of stuff, the world, the movement that we've made online is only going to become more long term. So I think the reason it's so important is it's because it's about, you know, showing up being that person that people can turn to and making sure that people can find you when they're looking for whatever it is that you do.

Shireen: Yeah, I find that when people set up their businesses, they tend to kind of hide behind the logo of the business. And they think, Okay, I'm trying to promote my business. So it's not all about me. And therefore, why should I have myself out there? Yeah. So what do you say to that?

Hannah: So in terms of it not being all about you, I do agree. However, when I talk about personal branding a leading, it's actually, you're the face of the message. And it's not about thinking about as it's all about me, and this is an ego thing, it's about whatever your business does, it's there to, to make a difference to help people in, in in the world. And that's, that's what you stand for. Having a having your face as the leader behind that just makes it easier for people to connect to a business doesn't have a pulse, it doesn't have a personality, it's a, it's an idea that's been turned into, you know, a logo and a list of services or products, you and your story is what people connect to, it's what makes you stand out is what makes you unique. So I think having yourself as the face of your business and the experience that's come before you gives more credibility to what you do. And it makes it easier for people to connect and engage with you. I mean, people talk about Jeff Bezos, just as much as they talk about Amazon, he is the face of that company. You know, same with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, these kinds of massive entrepreneurs, they are the faces of their businesses, they are the leaders there. And that's what people want, they want to have those leaders that they can connect to.

Shireen: So do you work with individuals in their careers as well as entrepreneurs running their own businesses? You know, tell us a bit about your typical client that you help?

Hannah: Yes, so absolutely, I would say my typical client is is a leader. So that might be somebody leading their own business, it could be somebody who just is a natural leader in terms of they want to create change my, you know, they want to stand for something. So it could be somebody who has a job who wants to get a get a job or to build their build their business, it doesn't really matter in terms of the medium that is behind it, what it's about is my target audience are very driven by positive impact by leaving the world a little bit better off than when they found it in whatever way that is. So I wouldn't say that I'm the best person, if someone's solely got commercial aims, you know, if they want to generate more leads, I don't think building your brand is it's more of a long term strategy than that, but it's about my target audience is very much often an entrepreneurial mindset. But whether that means they work in a job, or they or they're running their own business, it's just people who are driven by creating a positive mark on the world and sharing whatever that message is, whether it's, you know, a health thing, you know, some people I work with, for example, have had health conditions, and now they want to create businesses or share a message around mental health or physical health or whatever it is. So it's a story that's behind the person, and then helping them bring that to the world.

Shireen: Right, so what's your process then for working with your clients?

Hannah: So good question. So I have two sides of my business, I have one side, which is coaching and training. And then I have the other side, which is an agency where we do Done For You services. So it would depend really on whether somebody is I guess more time rich or cash rich. So if you if you have more cash and less time, then I could you we could work with power studios, and we can actually sort of build your brand on your behalf. So we would film you and but we do all the kind of editing and uploading and and the managing of the brand. In terms of the other side, the powerful leader side, I have online programs. So where people can come come in and go on a 30 day challenge or join. What I'm very excited to be launching next month is an academy, the powerful Leaders Academy where there'll be online training, online coaching, events, and all of that kind of stuff to really help people to build their brand. And then I have one to one coaching as well with certain people who, who I really, really want to work with one to one.

Shireen: So is it social media work that your agency is doing for people?

Hannah: So so it's content creation and sharing that content on social media, I Content Collection platforms such as YouTube. So that's predominantly what we do. However, we're building out the capability to build out PR and speaking capabilities as well so that we're also covering that side of branding. So that's sort of a new thing that we're building out at the moment.

Shireen: So quite a vast area, you've got a book that power of you tell us a bit more about the book, can people use it to work through their own brand?

Hannah: Absolutely, it's, it's a really good place to start, if you aren't sure exactly what you want to be, you sort of you have an inkling that you want to build a brand, but you're not 100% sure of how to do that. So I very much wrote it as a, as a manual for anybody who wants to build their brands and start to kind of put the pieces together to get them to where they want to get to. So yeah, that's exactly what the book does. It's completely designed to hopefully inspire for the first few chapters and show the art of the possible, but then it really is a step by step guide to actually building that brand through my methodology which I created.

Shireen: So how does the book support your work? What do people get from working with you that they can't get from the book, for example?

Hannah: That's a good question about all books, I guess, I think books are a really good way to get your brain thinking to get ideas generating to create small actions to you know, to try things, I think there's only so much you can get from a book, there's only so much, I guess, that we can do on our own, you know, there's often there's only so much I could put in the book where somebody could, let's say, working through what your message is going to be. So I've got activities that you can do in the book. However, if you're doing them on your own, you can't then get other people's thoughts on them. You can't kind of you know, test them see what see what people think. So there's that side of the kind of teaching side that you could work with me to do. But it's also the accountability side, you know, there's lots of things that we start and we don't finish, whereas if you work with somebody, you're more likely to have that accountability to actually complete or complete the thing you want to do.

Shireen: Sure, and some of the things people have to think through can take a long time. I mean, like working out your purpose, how to help people to do that.

Hannah: Yeah, this is a great example of something which I think is hard to get just from a book. So I do obviously highlighted that in the book, the importance of, of digging deep and finding out why you do what you do. For me, when I work with clients around their purpose, that's a three hour session where they've done some pre work, we sit together for three hours, it's quite a journey, I've had lots of kind of, you know, fully grown men crying in, you know, in the meetings and stuff that we have a really digging into what's brought you to hear and what really does drive you so yeah, so when I work with with clients on that it's a big session. Actually, I don't do as many of them as I used to do. But it is a really important thing to dig into your purpose and something which often helps us to flip a switch in ourselves of going from, I don't really I know that I'm driven by more, but I don't necessarily know exactly what that looks like to then go okay, I get it. I know what I want to do now, how can I then bring this to life?

Shireen: In your experience, can it take years for somebody to work this out? Or would they be able to have a definitive answer? Or does that change over time what their purpose is?

Hannah: I think it can adapt depending on how honest we want to be with ourselves. So if you've kind of been on a journey of let's say, self development of, you know, reading books, attending courses, whatever it is, it's kind of doing that doing that work entirely, which most of my clients already a quite a do a lot of work around that kind of stuff, I think it's, you're more likely to get to the deep purpose quicker. If you if you've never done any of that sort of inner work, then it can take longer, because you've not kind of ask yourself those honest questions, we have to be very honest with ourselves to discover what our purpose is, we have to really dig deep into the best times in our lives and the worst times in our lives. So it's all really down on the commitment of the individual. I think you can achieve a lot in a short space of time. If if if you're willing to be pushed if you're willing to ask the hard questions.

Shireen: So do you think that there's a place for personal branding within a business in terms of helping employees and others to develop their personal brand?

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. I think the world has changed so much in terms of the way that marketing and advertising and all of that works. So from a business point of view, let's talk about it from a commercial side. Having people in your company essentially like mini advocates who stand for something who share, share the message of your business is much more powerful than paying for expensive billboards or it's Spensive adverts because people, people connect and engage with people. So if I, for example, when I was at Accenture if I was off sharing content around my niche when I was at Accenture, which was around innovation, I am not only positioning myself as an expert in innovation, but I'm also positioning Accenture. So it's got huge benefits for the business in itself. And then also it gives benefits to the individual of helping them to build their own career, build their own brands and expert in that thing that they really love, which is great for their career at that that business, but also their career more generally, I think the more that businesses can do to empower their staff and make them feel that they're valued, and that they that what they have to say is important and valuable, the more likely those businesses are to keep those employees, I think businesses that don't want to help their employees have a brand or coming from a really fear based place of I want to keep all my employees under my, under my roof, and I don't want to let them further their careers by building their brands. I think that's an old way of thinking. So I think it's got so many benefits to helping your team to brand to build their brands. Absolutely.

Shireen: Yeah, in the legal profession, there's a lot of fear still. And you know, people tend not to actually even identify themselves by reference to their employers. So they'll just say that all views are my own. And they weren't even reveal their employers. I mean, how would you help a company to get its employees engaging on social media? But using the brand?

Hannah: If you like? It's a good question. And actually, I have a business I'm working with at the moment who are facing this exact challenge of how can we brand our employees but without linking it too much to the brand of the business, because the brand of the business has very stringent rules on what people can and can't do. In my opinion, it's about talking to the leaders of the business and digging deep and identifying what really, what really is the fear, you know, because it's often this is legacy fear that's been passed down, it's actually a lack of understanding, it's often got no basis behind it. So it is, Oh, I'm so nervous for everyone to build their brands, because what if it really tarnishes the reputation of the company, if somebody puts something silly online, that is such an old school way to think and also shows zero trust in your employees. And if you've got zero trust in your employees, that means you've got zero trust in the own culture that you've built in the company. So these are bigger questions, then, you know, should we be allowed to put our employees on social media, if if you don't think your employees can be trusted, being linked to your business on social media, then there's a bigger problem there. So I think it's about digging deep into what those questions really are. And then it's about doing a little bit at a time. So you know, a few people starting to build their brands, you know, doing it gradually, I don't think a big bang approach ever works. I think that's too scary for these companies who have got these companies been around some of them for hundreds of years, like they're not going to Big Bang, suddenly change everything, but a gradual approach of bringing them into the new world, seeing the benefits, removing those fears. And I think it really does have to come from the top down. I think it's unrealistic for leaders to say all of my company should be building their brand and getting in clients through the door through building their brands, but they're not doing it themselves. So I think it's about having a really honest conversation, not thinking about the levels of the business thinking treating everyone as an individual and going, what do we stand for? Let's put that out into the world.

Shireen: Yeah, it's really fundamental stuff as well about whether you've recruited the right sort of team members who you can trust to go out power in your name.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. And I think if you're worried about people putting inappropriate stuff out there that I think that exactly that does come down to well, have you got the right people, because if they're going to be tarnishing your brand online, and they're probably tarnishing your brand down the pub on a Friday night, it really does come down to what is that? Like any fear? Digging into where does that really come from? And companies are just a load of people as well, you know, we see them as separate entities. And I know they are legally separate entities, but actually is just a load of people making a load of decisions. And if there's a fear coming from people within the organization at the top, that's going to be filtering all the way down.

Shireen: Yeah, more and more. Millennials are now in positions of leadership within companies are coming up to leadership and they are quite used to being on social media. So I guess there is a need for companies to change. Yeah, and

Hannah: I think it's it's not easy like I would never say to any company come on guys, this stuff's easy. Get on with it. It's just tweeting. I don't really agree with that approach. It's it's a it's a small gradual change. It's also about embedding the time and people's diaries you know, where they are allowed to spend time on social media mean there are still a lot of companies Those who blocked the accent the accessibility, what's the word I'm looking for blocked to social media channels on their internal internet systems and on their laptops. So, you know, there's so many things that need to change to make it possible. But I think things are shifting. And I think if I was running a big business and old school business, I would just want to make sure that I was at the front of these kinds of discussions. I'm not saying that overnight, everything's going to change. But I would at least be ensuring I'm at the front of these conversations, because I think we've seen so much how fragile even some of the biggest businesses are in the world that we're moving into now. We knew it. Anyway, we've all been talking about the future of work and automation of jobs, all these things, we're already having these conversations, but now we've been forced to really look at it because of the current situation. And I think now it's about getting to the front of those conversations and saying, Okay, well, you know, we've been doing things a certain way, is it time that we start talking about doing them differently?

Shireen: I imagine there's a need for a lot of training within organizations, you know, of team and leaders as well. Do you get involved in that? Or do you hope to get involved in that?

Hannah: Yes, I do. I've been very fortunate to work with some very large companies, I can't actually say who they are, because I've got one of those fancy pieces of paper, which keeps everything secret. But yes, I have been very fortunate to work with some big companies and I am more and more working with more companies. Often I'm brought in either brought in at kind of the slightly lower level in the organization, then it's been, you know, the kind of people that I saw, I'm 27. So the kind of people in their 20s that are going, I want to bring this into the company, you know, they're ambitious, they've got really big goals of where they see the company going as they move up the ranks and, and bringing people like myself into kind of help the business to move in these ways. So there is a lot of training, there's a lot of stuff that comes down to, as I've said, the cultural side of the organization. And, and there's so many things that come up when it comes to building a brand. Because yes, there's the training, and there's all of that stuff. But then there's all the emotional stuff around it of being brave, putting stuff out there online dealing with the risk of, you know, the nasty comments, and there's so many things that come down to this, this is all about it's not just a case of putting something on social media, which I think is where social media trainings. And often for me when I worked in a company, when we used to have social media training and stuff, they really missed the fundamental side of, you know, the emotions that come that come with all of this stuff, the personal beliefs, the personal motivations, everyone's got. So I think it's about starting with each individual person. And then once they're in the right headspace, then you can add on all of the training. And these are the tools you can use. And this is what you can say, but so much comes before that.

Shireen: Yeah. So Hannah, where can people find you? I know, you also have a scorecard. Can you tell us a bit more about that work?

Hannah: Yeah. So I put this, so I created a methodology. There's kind of seven core components of powerful personal brands, it was a large amount of research, it was from looking at those brands that had succeeded those brands or failed, and I turned that into a methodology. And then what I've done is I've created a, a short scorecard where you can ask a series of yes or no questions, and then get your personal brand score at the end. And then a score for each of those core components, and then a little bit of personalized advice for how to improve your score. So that's it powerful leaders.co/scorecard. And that's a great way just, if you're just wondering where you're at with your brand, just to take that and find out what your score is. So that's the best, that's the best place to go. And find out yeah, get a little bit of insight into your brand.

Shireen: Great, and which person's personal brand do you particularly admire and why hammer?

Hannah: That's a really good question. I have kind of a few different people I admire for different reasons. So I would say I absolutely love Gabby Bernstein. So she's a sort of a spiritual coach over in the States. I love her brand. I love her message. I really love Gary Vaynerchuk I love his his his approach is a little bit Marmite. He's very direct, but I love the honesty of his content. I love Dr. Joe Dispenza I love the way he makes complicated things. I love the link between spirituality and physics. I love what he's done with it and the way he communicates I love his brand. Simon Sinek I really I love his brand. So yeah, there are quite a lot of people that I love but they are all for different reasons. But the thing that underlines all of them is that I personally feel that they're speaking from a real place of honesty and truth. And they've gotten through all of their fear based off of you know, what, what are people gonna think of me if I do this or or whatever, you know, they've got through that and they really are in a position where they're serving an audience and teaching and inspiring and that for me is what makes a strong brand.

Shireen: So being yourself really.

Hannah: Being yourself. Absolutely. And moving any ego, any fear based stuff aside and focused on who were the people that you want to serve? Who were the people that you want to read your content, who are the people that you want to inspire and teach and being completely centered on them and putting them at the center of everything that you do?

Shireen: Great. Thank you very much indeed. Hannah. That was interesting interview.

Hannah: Thank you so much. Great questions. I really enjoyed that. It was lovely to talk to you. By them. Bye bye.