44:1 Five star profiles

Lee:
Welcome to Trailblazer FM. This is episode number one of season 44. We are talking one thing and the entire season will be hosted by myself, Mr. Lee Matthew Jackson, and the one and only…

Nicole:
Mrs. Nicole Osborne.

Lee:
Welcome to season 44, Nicole. I am so pumped that we’re going to be hosting this entire season together. We’ve got a whole load of amazing content planned. I just want to thank you now in advance for helping me plan all of the up and coming episodes that we’re going to be recording.

Nicole:
Oh, Lee. I’m so happy we doing this because the one thing people can change to make a real difference to our agency grow. You and I had so much fun already preparing this, so hopefully our audience is going to love this.

Lee:
Absolutely. Let’s build on the one thing folks. What do we mean when we say one thing? Well, if you imagine you look at your business and maybe you feel frustrated about a whole load of issues in your company, maybe you want to generate more sales. Maybe you want to work less hours, whatever it is. It kind of feels unachievable. You feel like you have to do so much to improve the quality of your life. The quality of your leads. The quality of your finances.

Lee:
Now, me and Nicole are kind of old enough nowadays, sorry Nicole, to realise that big change doesn’t happen through massive action, which is tiring and stressful. Actually, big change happens by changing one thing here or there just like in season 43, where I talk about slight changes you can make to improve agency life. That is the same methodology for this season.

Lee:
What’s that one simple thing that you can change to help improve your agency, be that your branding or your marketing, be that your finances, be that mental health, whatever it is, we’re going to be tackling that over season 44 with Nicole. So Nicole, I’m going to hand over to you to set the scene for today’s episode.

Nicole:
Thank you Lee. Today, we are talking about the one thing as in you getting five star profile pictures, because what we have really discovered is that across we seen lots and lots of people have out of date images. Perhaps you’ve grown a beard or you changed your hairdo completely.

Nicole:
One thing which might happen is that someone sees your pictures online and when they meet you in personal or on Zoom or on Teams and they hardly recognised you and that’s not great for your personal brand as an agency owner and for building trust. Today we are going to help you check out your pictures because we know first impressions really count. It’s such a great way of elevating your personal brand. I’m excited about this Lee. Are you excited about this?

Lee:
I’m extremely excited. Shall I share some of my experiences of profile pictures?

Nicole:
Go on.

Lee:
Well, I’ll share two experiences. The first experience is this, I have a friend who is a professional photographer and he needed a model. Back when I was 21 and slim and gorgeous, he took this incredible picture of me, which I used for years, literally years. I was way into my thirties before I finally let go of it. The problem was is I looked nothing like that. I put an awful lot of weight on.

Nicole:
So gorgeous. Still gorgeous.

Lee:
Thank you very much. I know, but I put an awful lot of… I just look completely different from that picture and when people met me, they didn’t really recognise me because they had the idea of this Gucci model style image that I had put together. I’ll try and remember to find it and we’ll put it on the show notes over on trailblazer.fm.

Lee:
The second experience I’ve had of creating profile images to try and project who I wanted people to believe I was, was a expensive photo shoot where I hired a suit. I went to my friend’s parents’ house who have a gorgeous, massive house in the country with amazing views across the countryside. Super, super duper expensive. I took a mobile phone like a decent looking one at the time and I had all of these pictures done of me pretending to work on a Mac in this posh house or walking around the village on the phone, pretending to talk to them in this shirt and suit looking all posh and totally not me.

Lee:
See, I rock up to meetings in a cap and I have my beard, jeans and all that jazz. People know what I look like nowadays. If you head on over to trailblazer.fm I’m slapped everywhere. You know what I’m going to look like, and that’s what I looked like. However, I was trying to portray this image of the professional guy to the people that I thought I wanted to attract to my business.

Nicole:
I think that’s so common, right? We have this image of having to be someone we are actually not. Often you look at profile pictures, people are suited and booted. In a digital agency environment, you’re not expecting that. Frankly, corporate clients are hiring agencies, A. Because they don’t have your capacity and expertise in-house, but also because they want to have some fun. They want to be entertained.

Nicole:
You having that picture of you, I think it was a white shirt with a black blazer and your mobile phone, it’s not exactly approaching, right?

Lee:
No. Absolutely.

Nicole:
I’m just picturing this photo because I know it so well.

Lee:
In fact, it’s still looking at me right now, the very same picture because I have my outlook.com email open and I haven’t worked out how to change the blasted picture. I can just see this little thumbnail of me posing nicely shaved in a suit on a Galaxy S2.

Nicole:
What we’re encouraging people really to do is to have a look on their social media profiles, to have a look on their agency websites. How up to date are the photos they are using? Are they professional photos? Because if this is the one thing, the first impression you make, you want it to be the best it can be. You want it to be five star.

Nicole:
I see so many pictures where it’s someone at a party or… It just really shows that it’s not a professionally taking picture or at least a picture, a selfie, which was taking with the clear intention of being a selfie to be used as a social media profile picture. We really encouraged everyone just to check that out because everyone can do better.

Nicole:
Our good friend, Tom Amos, when I first met Tom, he had one of his pictures where he was wearing a shirt and he was being really, really serious. For everyone who knows Tom from Design Box, you know that he’s such a fun guy, really, really approachable. He looks much more at ease with a really nice t-shirt, doesn’t he?

Nicole:
There’s lesson to be learned. Wearing a t-shirt wearing a baseball cap, looking approachable does not mean that you’re not going to be professional and that you don’t have those standards corporate clients are looking for.

Nicole:
Please be yourself in your photos. Look into the camera. Absolutely, you’ve got to look into the camera. Have a smile, if that’s appropriate, if you like smiling and just find someone who can help you with photo to make you feel at ease. For example, a lot of people work with their spouses on photos.

Nicole:
Now I can’t work with my hubby in these sort of things. He’s got one image of me. I actually hired a professional photographer and it’s been so worth it. But you can get a friend to take a nice picture, choose a lighting well, choose your location well. There’s lots of things you can do to really have a great picture and then use it consistently across all social media channels.

Lee:
In the pictures that you do create, it’s a good idea not to create a false image, but actually show up as yourself, just as Nicole was saying with regards to Tom, he looks so relaxed in his t-shirt. That’s how we shows up at events. That’s how I know Tom. If I’m going to see this corporate image of him and then meet him at an event, that’s two different Toms and it’s going to be hard to resonate. Also, the fact that phones on our cameras are so darn good, you don’t have to invest in professional photography necessarily, but you can, like Nicole was saying, find a decent enough place with some decent enough natural light and take some cracking pictures of you as you and of your team, too. That rhymed.

Nicole:
You did so well though. Just an additional five star tip, if you already have your digital brand colours, try and wear something which really compliments it. I would always say, take few pictures of different colours tops, because then it will really help you to have some energy for your social media profile pictures, but also for your website and it easily looks like you spend hours and hours planning this. If you have some colours, use those in your tops. If you have blue eyes, bring that out, have a complimentary colour, can make a huge difference. So Lee. Are we ready to suggest what kind of actions we want people to take on this one thing to get five star profile pictures? Are we ready for that?

Lee:
We are totally ready. I’ve got my pen and paper hit me.

Nicole:
Okay. This is what we invite you to do, we want you to go through your social media profiles and actually check your photo. If it’s not up to date any longer and if you know you could look better, whatever better might mean, please go and get a new picture. Whether you take with yourself or you get a local photographer, just update your picture.

Nicole:
What we would like you to do is to post them across all your social media profiles consistently, because that makes such a huge difference for brand recognition, and then please come and post on our Facebook group @trailblazer so that we can actually see you’re new picture and we can cheer you on. Go on, get a new picture and post it in the Facebook group.

Lee:
Folks, you can find the Facebook group on trailblazer.fm/group. We can’t wait to see the pictures that you come up with. If you use a local photographer as well, be great to link to their website so that other people in your area know who’s good and who to use.

Lee:
We are so freaking excited to see your upcoming five star profile pictures. Also, if you’ve already nailed your profile picture, please still come and post it. We’ll create a thread. You’ll be able to find it pinned so it will be super obvious where it is. Come and post your existing one so other people can learn and be inspired by your awesomeness.

Lee:
Folks, we also have a couple of resources put together by the wonderful Nicole herself. You can check those out in the show notes, head on over to Trailblazer FM Episode 1 of season 44. One is a deep dive into your own personal branding for 2022, that’s a YouTube video, and the second is branding yourself for agency growth. Seven reasons you need a personal brand and that’s a full on blog post with a complimentary video.

Lee:
Whilst you are on the website, be sure to scroll down to the comments and say hello. Give our wonderful co-host some encouragement. Feel free to share your pictures there in the comments too. We can’t wait to have some conversations. All that’s left for us to say is goodbye from me and-

Nicole:
Nicole, and goodbye from me as well.