Joe Gannon: AI, Authority and Personal Branding for Founders Who Have Something to Say

How to Get More of Nick Berry and tBOJ

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform and leave a review. Your feedback helps us bring you more valuable content.

Follow us:

• Nick on LinkedIn
• Nick on X
• tBOJ Podcast on X
• Redesigned.Business

The Business Owner's Journey Podcast host: Nick Berry
Production Company: FCG

[Image Gallery: American Entrepreneur Nick Berry]

Transcript for: Joe Gannon: AI, Authority and Personal Branding for Founders Who Have Something to Say

00:00 Intro: Joe Gannon's personal brand client list

02:30 Enthusiasm, results, and earning trust

03:22 Engineering serendipity through personal branding

06:40 Should every business owner build a personal brand?

07:34 Audience path vs leads path for founders

09:01 Aligning content strategy with business objectives

12:43 AI and personal branding: the middle is gone

17:54 The effort-impact matrix for content creation

20:28 Why follower count is a misleading metric

22:01 Leveraging AI for authority-driven content

30:10 The StrateTree framework for founder positioning

38:00 Bottom-of-funnel content and social proof

Joe Gannon (00:00)

whether you're getting a job, whether you're trying to get promotion, whether you're trying to start a business, like your online presence is either working for you or working against you. And every time you post something online that is training your audience.

to want to see more of your content or to look away. So people who think they don't have a personal brand defined, unfortunately, the bad news is you do have a personal brand that's just working against you at this point.

Nick Berry (00:35)

Joe Gannon is the personal brand strategist behind the content engines of the likes of Ali Abdaal, Chris Williamson, Jordan Peterson, and a long list of other people you've heard of. He's also the founder of Amplify, the personal brand agency for world-class founders and creators. What do you think separates a personal brand that drives leads from one that just creates noise and takes a lot of work? Today, we're gonna break down what authority actually looks like for founders in the age of AI.

Joe explains how you can engineer Serendipity through content. The difference between the audience path and a leads path. His take on why AI just wiped out the entire middle of the content market. What the StrateTree framework is and why it kills bad positioning. How to find content that's low effort and high impact for you. How many followers you actually need to win and how and when to show up across multiple platforms.

Joe's a wealth of knowledge and he's proven to be the best at what he does. Enjoy this interview.

Nick Berry (01:28)

I like to tell people that the people that I work with are arguably the best in the world at what they do. But your client list is something else. Ali Abdaal, Chris Williamson, Jordan Peterson.

Sahil Bloom, Greg Eisenberg, the A16Z podcast, Dr. Eliza Philby, Noah Kagan, Cliff Weisman. I don't know if I've missed anybody, but that's a pretty solid client list there. how does that happen? How did you get started into that world and gain the trust of those people to handle growing their brands?

Joe Gannon (02:03)

Yeah, I think the proudest thing for me actually first is that I worked each of those for multiple years or at least a year with each, which I think is the thing we're most proud of as a team. And some of those clients do this week who we aren't working with now messaged me again saying, okay, can we work together? So that's one of the proudest things I'm definitely proud of the team of. Yeah. I mean, the truth is, I think when I started my career and started my being self-employed, I was like 22, just out of COVID and

What I did back then is what I do now is just showing a lot of enthusiasm. I think I was told by a mentor that enthusiasm is my superpower. And I think once you can help one high profile client or just help anybody to get a transformation, once you do that real work and you become someone they want to partner with, or they want to work with, that then speaks volumes. And these types of people, they want to keep, keep you around. And I think that's been like the through line of my career is just, you know, trying to be enthusiastic and

trying to create real value and results and anyone that you work with or any service based like entrepreneurial founder who does that, that is the gold. There's not a lot to it than that because once you do that, then someone who has leveraged themselves or has an incredible network, they can go on to refer you and they can create an open doors for you. And I think that's why I experienced, you know, I did a good job in some of my first projects that I worked on when I started my business and at the start being a freelancer, it just went from there.

Nick Berry (03:22)

you just described, that tells you a lot about a personal brand, And the impact of it some of those connections came as a result of some of the other names on that same list, right?

Joe Gannon (03:31)

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yes. The first that worked with Ali. So that was completely serendipity. And I think the number one benefit of creating content, having a personal brand is that you can engineer serendipity. Which is one of my favorite phrases is that by putting intentional messages out there of who you are documenting, what you're already doing is leaving breadcrumbs online to be seen by, you know, thousands of people, if not millions. LinkedIn is the platform we spend the most time on. It's got 1.1 billion users on. So if you're active on a

on the platform, which is a global audience. Better yet, if what you offer can be enjoyed by a global potential of prospects, then it's just, you allow yourself to open these doors and to benefit from this. And yeah, I can talk more about like the specific ways these specific clients went on to be, but I think, I think it's that like I've, I didn't have any reputation or any career experience when I started at like 21 with creating content. I was documenting what I was learning. I was active in the DMS.

And yeah, creating opportunities. And if you do that long enough, you will, you will benefit from it.

Nick Berry (04:29)

so one thing is I've gotten to know you is yes, your enthusiasm may be a superpower of yours. I don't think that's the only one. I think you clearly have a skill for what you're doing here. I'm not saying that you're solely responsible for Ali Abdelal or Chris Williamson being who they are, but

you held a significant role or hold a significant role. You're clearly doing something right with them. What is that skill? Where did that come from?

Joe Gannon (04:56)

Yeah, I think it, yeah, the content strategy piece and like seeing content creation is this like art and a science. So there's, there's just enough to get your teeth into, which is just, you know, I've done this now for seven years working in what is now called the creator economy. And like have I feel just as energized now as I did starting this. So it's just seeing really like what are the best ways to share your message online. I'd kind of say the content marketing is that vehicle for all of us to share what we know.

And to, hopefully help people, every, everyone we've worked with has been educational content, like educational content creators, or if it's a founder or a business owner, just getting so passionate that they have stories and hard earned lessons and, battle scars, which, you know, if they could just share those messages and what they learned, someone else there, someone else out there can benefit from. So that's where my passion stems. And I guess we call that, you know, social media marketing today, but yeah, I started my journey being that content strategist. And that was something that I enjoyed in my evenings and weekends.

I was just constantly obsessed with the moves. All of these social media platforms are making like when Instagram brought out short form content and tick tock changed the whole industry. was seeing people who didn't have any reputation or any background quite honestly changed their life. you know, go, go into being one of the, the, the, the true experts in the industry or someone becoming known.

And these waves are always happening. There's always a wave. There's always a trend. You know, we all live on these social media platforms, whether we like it or not. They are tools to be used and they can use us, but there's huge opportunities. And when one of those waves looks like a, opportunity, which aligns of our skills, we can really quite honestly change our lives with it. And so I was like young and sort of curious to learn and just curious to learn new skills and just benefiting so much from platforms like LinkedIn, spending time there. But when I started posting content, I saw that

In terms of organic reach, like I could have a hundred followers, but I could do a post and it could get a thousand views. and when the best, inflection points for anyone really is going from zero to one. So if you don't have a personal of Brian, not creating content just yet. You can enjoy so much benefit when you poke your head out the sand and old colleagues or old people you used to work with reach out and go, Hey, like, what are you doing right now? There's just so many benefits that can come from being public facing. should everyone do it? I mean, maybe not like.

If it comes down to your goals and if you're doing it for the right reasons, but for me and for our clients, we believe there's messages that we know which we should share lived experience, the stories, mistakes and lessons that we wish we could avoid and package that all up in content, put it out there and content can really be seen as a service and not like a vanity thing where you're doing it to be famous.

Nick Berry (07:25)

so for just say the

founder situation, what can they take from some of the clients that you've worked with? what is it about?

and Ali Abdaal, Chris Williamson, Jordan Peterson, that is actually relatable to my situation.

Joe Gannon (07:40)

One thing I would say, I mean, the people that we all look at who are kind of like the top 1%, even the top 0.1%, they are professionals. I think it is important to understand if someone's a creator and doing it as their professional business, like creating content is their business versus content creation is one form of marketing for your business. I think that's important. So when we started out doing this, I was very just like, and it's my first business jumping in, we'd say that we, we help founders and creators. The truth is they're two different.

Uh, ICPs and two different people, two different needs doing it for two different reasons. So I think it's a great point. think business owners, um, you know, having a personal brand online is, you know, take inspiration from the podcasters and the YouTubers and the creators, but they're doing that for a different reason. Um, we call this an audience path and leads path. So an audience path is that you're, creating a personal brand solely like you're going to build an audience and success is that you monetize the fact that you have an audience. You're.

You're doing sponsorships, you're getting brand deals, you're going onto panels. So you're creating content to build an audience of which you can monetize. Lead's path is typically like your audience, business owners, entrepreneurs, all of this content creation thing is just one form of marketing. I'm 28 now, I'd say my generation and the generations below kind of think the social media marketing is the only form of marketing. Anyone with stripes would say SEO, paid ads, the list goes on, putting flyers out there.

Whether you should have a personal brand comes down to your objectives. I think it's too easy to get focused on the best content creators, like the world-class ones. I think it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because they are the ones who've built leverage, maybe have media teams now, and they're the ones that we see. They're the most visible, but I'll be the first to say for everyone listening to this, like you've got to understand your goals and start there. Reverse engineer back. Does you having a public facing presence match up with what you're trying to achieve?

Chances are probably is yes, but for some people they'd be better off doing paid ads or if they've got a local business, you don't need to spend time on these global platforms when you can get referrals or get clients in other ways.

Nick Berry (09:39)

what I hear is it's kind of a run your own race situation, right? Like I don't need to compare myself to Chris Williamson or some of the other people on your list because it doesn't really matter what they did. What matters is my goal where I'm trying to get and making sure that we have a strategy designed for that.

Joe Gannon (09:55)

Yeah, a hundred percent. like, but to answer your point directly, what have I learned from, from these individuals? Well, they, they, they, they seen these from these individuals, what I've learned is that they think in systems. So Ali Abdal is an example. When I first met him, I walked into his apartment in Cambridge, the whole apartment slash like kitchen area was turned into a YouTube studio. Like that he would say, you know, Hey Alexa, and the lights would come on and the, that light comes on with a 60 % hue and this camera comes on with like enough

Nick Berry (10:22)

You just triggered my

Alexa.

Joe Gannon (10:24)

Yeah. Apologies. but within 10 seconds he can go from like apartment to YouTube studio. And he was just way ahead of his game. Like I give props to these people, like every single time I get asked this question, because what he was teaching in aware of YouTube and executing for years only now was like common knowledge. Like he would say, you know, the titles and the thumbnails were the most important part through YouTube video, you kept the best video, but if no one clicks, no one knows.

We all know that now and we've got LLMs and we can get this information, but that was genuinely a huge epiphany. And he was teaching that like six, seven years ago. So they've gotten professional with this. Like they've gone pro with content creation and a lot of these people have kind of taken a passion and built a business. So maybe we, you know, maybe it's not as useful to look at the finished products now, but all of these individuals did, they did take a passion project or a side hustle and they've built a whole business around it with leverage.

And even this week we're seeing in the world podcasts, like there's a podcast called TBPN, which just got acquired by open AI. There are fan channels like Manchester United. I'm from the UK. So Manchester United YouTube channel is the biggest fan channel. A guy called, think Mark Goldbridge, his YouTube channel just got acquired by Gary Neville's media company, The Overlap. So the opportunities now, like you can take a passion project, decide project, and you can scale it, prove success, build a community, build an audience. And there's even.

Nowadays, like you can get acquired by companies, because of the, the, on the extreme end, the authority and the influence you've had. That's a little bit different to business owners, which we can dive a lot deeper into like the strategies of business owners, but just to articulate the opportunity of doing this now. and so many people got onto it quick, built a system, had a strategy focused on their positioning. That's the three pillars anyone needs to nail. And they did it for long enough and they

positioned themselves into their zone of genius, began to hire around them and they treated it like a pro.

Nick Berry (12:11)

Do you think that they had that plan in mind all along or do you think that they were just kind of figuring it out as they went?

Joe Gannon (12:18)

I think success leaves clues. So I know Chris Williamson and even Stephen Bartlett. There's an interview with Stephen Bartlett probably 10 years ago now with Gary Vaynerchuk. And Gary Vaynerchuk was already underway with this being one that probably at the time, the most famous entrepreneur who was laudating like media businesses and media empires and the opportunities and saying everyone should create content. And Stephen Bartlett was saying to him, okay, no one's doing what you're doing in the UK. I'm going to be.

the Gary Vaynerchuk of the UK. And look where Stephen Bartlett is now. Like even the fact, you know, Stephen Bartlett, um, a couple of years ago, he was just like, No, in the circles of the UK. So success leaves clues. Chris Williams and looked at Joe Rogan's output, three, three podcasts a week and match that he's now done three podcasts a week for seven years. So, and if, and if you know Chris, Chris is the most dialed in individual in terms of how he shows up, whether it's the gym, his health, his nutrition, like who he is.

is why that podcast is success. So, but did they know it could be this? think each of them knew the potential cause they saw like in the UK, you see this success at the U S and you think, can I do the same thing? but that's in this sphere of creative businesses. there are so many indirect benefits for business owners being public facing, right? It's just the obvious is referrals. The obvious is being just keeping being front of mind for people you've worked with in the personal as well. And we can focus on that a lot more, but

did they know about it? I'd say yes, cause they're incredibly smart people. Like anyone that we see with success, you'll say the same thing with like people you coach or entrepreneurs you've met. The second you have one-on-one time with them, you know why they're successful. It's who they are as a person.

Nick Berry (13:47)

Right, it's not an accident that it

They may not have pegged that this is what it's gonna look like exactly, but you know that it wouldn't have been this, it would have been something else. Whatever direction they set out, they were going to get there. so I like that you keep making the distinction between a content creator and the business owner.

Joe Gannon (13:58)

Yep.

Nick Berry (14:05)

One of the things I think that they have in common is maybe the resistance to putting content out there. Is it the same for both of those groups? And really, regardless of the answer, how are you getting people to move through that discomfort and make it a part of the strategy?

Joe Gannon (14:20)

Yeah, the number one thing any business owner needs to know to have a successful personal a brand is you need a through line between your social media content, all of this activity and your objectives as the business. And we teach this in a cohort, but that is literally what we teach. It's like, you need to be able to map out why this content and how, and what types of content is going to lead to success. If we take being a business coach, like we take you as an example. if your goal is to get more coaching clients,

then you need to first understand, okay, is my business local or global? So for yourself, like you can work with people virtually. So you could benefit from someone across the world. Could they could be a client like so, you you can operate in these global social media platforms, create content and find clients from all over the Next is like, okay, cool. If you're trying to get more coaching clients, then it comes down to what content would help educate people to be a coaching client of yours. So like for you, for you, Nick, if someone's going to work with you one-on-one as a business coach.

You do kind of want to be on video or you do want to express in this long form forms of writing or go on podcasts. People want to hear your opinions, understand your personality and understand if they could vibe with you. Cause if you're a business coach working one on one and offering a service, if they didn't really vibe with you, they didn't really feel confident in, in who you are as a person, then unfortunately they could look elsewhere. So it's like, what are you trying to achieve? And you've got to work backwards from that. if you literally just map out the sort of buyer's journey, I guess, or the marketing funnel, we reverse engineer it.

You want more coaching clients. Okay, cool. Well, they probably need to get to know you. So maybe the step before that is a discovery. Cool. Amazing. So what do we think is what I'd be asking a client? What types of content would give people, confidence in your authority and how can we educate them to want the discovery? Cool. And you just go backwards from there. So maybe it's a newsletter where they can hear the stories and success stories with clients. Maybe it is a YouTube channel. Maybe you interview people.

Nick Berry (16:02)

Yeah.

Joe Gannon (16:05)

Amazing. Well, that's going to get more, calls booked. okay. Well, how can you help someone do it themselves to the point in this world we live in, we're all really charging for implementation. Like that was the case with Google. People can find out answers to any question they have nowadays with Google, let alone these LLMs, let alone Claude, cowork and open core and all these different things. So each of us in the service space industry, we're charging for implementation. So if you go backwards from discovery call, what could be a lead magnet or some sort of training or

How can we get them some quick wins where they come to the conclusion? I know it's Nick that I want to work with, but I don't have the time to figure this out myself. So then it's just a trade-off. I've got confidence in him. He can get me this outcome. I've seen it before with, with who he's worked with. And that's where then we step back from like a lead magnet you could devise into your social media content. So like for you, it's how, how are you sharing your transformations, the before and after of who you've worked with? How can I see you maybe do free coaching with someone and it's a video

And I can kind of see the, see behind the curtain of how you coach someone. that could be great content. And then that informs your content calendar, right? But if you said to me, I want to speak on more stages, I don't want business clients want to speak, speak on more stages. I'd be suggesting completely different content ideas. so like that's, that's what we teach. And that's like, hopefully tangible steps that anyone can map. It's like social media is your public, you're operating these public spheres. You're fighting the attention of.

anyone else's content, how you can bridge from the public spheres into private is like having a newsletter, some sort of owned audience. get someone across the bridge with a lead magnet, once on your newsletter, how are you educating them, training them on your way of doing things. You do a great job of that to the point where the next step would be a discovery call to the point where then as a client closed.

Nick Berry (17:43)

Why do founders, CEOs, content creators, anybody who is the face or maybe should be the face, why do they have resistance? What trips them up about it? It's different when I have to make it about me. And of course, I have this problem too, right? So why is it so hard when it becomes about me?

Joe Gannon (17:55)

Yep.

I think so many things. think the first is the biggest hesitation is always time. And on the leads path, you said about the audience path as you're building a personal brand to build an audience, which you can monetize. The leads path is that this is all a marketing activity to get leads. So I'm doing content to get leads. There's a clearer direct through line and this all needs to have an ROI as fast as possible. So the biggest hesitation with any business owner is just.

This personal branding thing is, you know, it takes work to do it correctly. And it's a long-term play. I need results now. So I think there's sometimes bigger hesitation is someone needs leads or they need, they need to fill that pipeline. And then that they're swimming in this, this pool of this actually like long-term play. So there's just a bit of a mismatch with the alignment of how long this stuff can take. I think next is, I'd say is the systems. So we talk a lot about.

A matrix called the effort impact matrix. So content creation in an idle situation would take a low effort on your behalf and have high impact. So you don't want to be spending 10 hours agonizing over a blog, for example, like a LinkedIn newsletter, right? this, this, this long form piece of writing, which is high effort for you, but it has a low impact because there's not a discovery mechanism on LinkedIn to get newsletters to more people. So it's like a lot of people, a lot of business owners are putting.

A respectable amount of time into content creation each week, but they're putting and they're, placing their chips in the wrong places. If you've created this podcast for yourself to interview, interesting people, not putting myself in that bracket, but other people. and, if you're, if you're a verbal communicator that comes easier to you and there's multiple benefits stacked from doing a podcast, other people agonize, like I have to do text posts or I have to do video to get the benefit.

Nick Berry (19:30)

You it.

Joe Gannon (19:41)

Effort impact matrix is personalized. So for me, maybe video is low effort at this point. I'm used to it on the reps, but a founder could think they have to be on video to be successful. And it's a mismatch with their personality or how they get energy. So I think there's just a lot of common pitfalls. and the solution to that is to understand how could I sustainably create content three times a week? Like what is sustainable for me? Is it interviews, which are document? Is it, I just write.

on a Sunday for one hour with a coffee and I just do written content. Do I go through my camera roll every two weeks to look back on my calendar and add commentary to what I already did? Like it's an individual thing. And we can step into like what good content looks like because that's the whole thing as well. Like a lot of us, think, are posting content but the truth is, it's not good enough as well.

Nick Berry (20:29)

So I kind of want to circle back to something that you touched on about this belief that personal branding is something that's going to take a long time, before I get an ROI. And I've heard you make comments that suggest that you view it differently, That that's maybe a common belief, but not necessarily your perspective.

Joe Gannon (20:47)

Yeah, I think personal branding is a long-term play, but yeah, you don't need 10,000 followers to have a successful personal brand. so why would anyone want a hundred thousand followers online? people have an incorrect perception that like a hundred thousand followers will get them exactly what they want from the personal of brand. Like they think that they're going to have all of this inbound attention and opportunities through their ears, but you can get with a thousand followers, all of the benefits of a personal brand. Like if you have a.

clear positioning, like this is who I am, who I help, what I've done. Nowadays, these algorithms like LinkedIn's algorithm in the last couple of months is now taking what you have in your profile and then using that to suggest your content to other people. Because the AI models can see is Nick Berry a business coach with experience or is he doing this as like a hobby and starting projects? When you talk about helping people to grow their businesses, is that like a hobby for Nick or is it expertise?

And LinkedIn wants to encourage expertise and thought leadership. So our profiles, there's things we can do on our profiles, our positioning. If you get that clear, these algorithms now can help and be a matchmaker to Joe as a hobbyist wants to grow his business is looking for that content to be connected with Nick Berry, who can help him. So to your point, I actually think it's easier nowadays to benefit from power to branding in the earlier stages, because we're actually getting recommended these algorithms are smarter to recommend us.

But to the point, you know, if you spend time creating content on platforms where there's high organic reach, you can get thousands of views and only have a hundred followers. But again, some people are choosing a starting point where they're posting content where their ICP isn't even spending time. So they're using the wrong platforms, post, great content, but to crickets. and yeah, like honestly, what goes into good content is a whole topic. Like this, there is a skill to this, of course, but I don't think it's as hard as people think.

It's just, just spending too much time doing the wrong things is how I summarize it.

Nick Berry (22:30)

so I can tell you from my experience, what I've seen and done is, you sometimes it's just, it looks really simple you leverage one piece of content across multiple platforms. So it's like, well, it just makes, you know, makes sense. Why wouldn't I just go ahead and copy paste or why wouldn't I go ahead and have the post pushed from one platform to the other? I think that that,

adds to the confusion as to where your time should really be spent. Even if it's just an incremental increase in the effort,

Joe Gannon (22:58)

Yeah. Like, yeah, I think it's one of the most common mistakes is like people think you have to be in every platform. particularly like when tick tock came onto the scene, it's like, okay, cool. A nine by 16 vertical video can be posted on tick tock, Instagram, reels and YouTube shots. Doesn't mean it should. like this, all of my LinkedIn activity, all these images I'm making could go on Instagram, but it comes down to being intentional. It comes down to your business objectives. Are you spending time on platforms where your prospects could be? That's the first thing.

And different platforms are more saturated than others. LinkedIn is getting a little bit more saturated. LinkedIn, Substack, it comes down to these platforms as own objectives too. So Substack is really trying to be like the single ecosystem for like professional writing. And you can host a podcast there and you can do all these different things directly in Substack. Substack right now is trying to get market share. So Substack wants to make it easier for new people to create on the platform. And it's going to incentivize new people to create on the platform.

So Substack is a great opportunity right now, same as LinkedIn. And what I said earlier is that there's always these, know, there's the sea of opportunity and there's just waves coming. When the wave of TikTok came, it was obvious to a lot of people that, you know, you could go with zero followers and maybe grow to a hundred K in a couple of months because the platform was incentivizing every new person to get a viral video straight away. Basically. I watched the wave of TikTok come and go because it wasn't my platform. I didn't want to…

average out and dilute my messages and become someone online, which didn't match up with my goals. And a lot of business owners saw that wave and felt a bit of FOMO that you could grow on TikTok really fast, but ultimately it wasn't aligned with their objectives. And it's not to be worried because it's always an opportunity. These platforms are competing for our attention and they're competing for market share and they have their own objectives. So it comes down to us to spend time on the platforms and to create content on the platforms where there's opportunity and where there's alignment.

Um, and a lot of people get this wrong to your point. They try and post content across Instagram, Facebook, Tik TOK, Twitter. They have their eyes in five different directions. Pick one platform, go as deep as you can understand the language, the culture, what performs, what doesn't perform the algorithm, spend time on your analytics. If you're not doing that stuff already, do not jump to another platform. Like there is an element here of because the opportunity is so high, you can genuinely change your business, change your life, grow your network, have incredible upside.

Nick Berry (24:51)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Gannon (25:10)

We need to respect that and appreciate that. We need to know these patterns from the, like the back of our hand and to spend time and that time needs to be honored. Basically, you can't just get that benefit without, with, by just showing up like one hour a week.

Nick Berry (25:23)

it's better to be an inch wide and a mile deep than try to be a mile wide and an inch deep.

Joe Gannon (25:28)

Yeah, a hundred percent. And like if you grew your LinkedIn to 5,000 followers, you'll begin to understand what we love to teach us, like the evergreen principles of all of this stuff, right? It's like demand and supply, like what content, what unique thoughts that you have, which your audience likes. And then you, ask your audience in the DMS, Hey, I saw that you loved that video, loved your comment. What else can I create? Which will help you. You get to have those one-on-one interactions. The magic is always in the DMS.

We always say like, you want to create an audience feedback loop. It's one of the most important things is you post content, you get engagement and you, spend the time to ask the people who showed up in your comments. They could have done anything else with their day, but they watched your video for 10 seconds or they, they read your post from start to finish and gave you their time. Go to those people and say to them, how else can I help you? And then once you create that content audience feedback loop, like that's the gold that will then show you the content to create that will.

show you what your strategy should be, how content, the content formats you should do. And it will also give you ideas for your business as well of what services you could offer, which you weren't thinking about. It's hard to do that, to go deep to your point on every platform. You're going to just do five platforms, about 20 % effort and nothing's going to compound. Go deep on one. And then if you have 10,000 LinkedIn followers and you start a newsletter and the value proposition of the newsletter is like,

Nick Berry (26:41)

Mm-hmm.

Joe Gannon (26:49)

I go even deeper on this newsletter than I get to share my LinkedIn content. You can be pretty confident when you launch a newsletter that maybe, you know, one in 20 will go and follow. So if you had 10,000 LinkedIn followers, you're starting from 500 people on your newsletter. That's incredible. That is like incredible to start that, to start from that perspective of growth compared to if you're trying to start a newsletter from scratch. So yeah, to your point, it's just go deep on platforms.

layer on additional like subsidiary platforms, whichever alignment and are adjacently benefited to you. And that's how you build an ecosystem, which is very tight rather than having all these diverse messages. And you're an expert at this, but all of our content, all of our positioning now is also speaking more than ever to robots and LLMs, which read all this stuff. So if you're confused about what it is that you do, your audience will be, and then these robots have got no chance.

Nick Berry (27:37)

So let's talk about that a little bit. What is the effect to someone trying to build a personal brand right now of AI invading?

Joe Gannon (27:45)

Yeah. There's never been a higher risk to build a personal brand that doesn't work for your goals. we will have a personal brand. I mean, a huge misconception is that people who don't work on a personal brand think they don't have one, but whether you're getting a job, whether you're trying to get promotion, whether you're trying to start a business, like your online presence is either working for you or working against you. And every time you post something online that is training your audience.

to want to see more of your content or to look away. So people who think they don't have a personal brand defined, unfortunately, the bad news is you do have a personal brand that's just working against you at this point. if I sat here and I did five posts this week about all different things, like how I spent time on the weekend, I'd talk about a client win, share about this side project, this hobby that I have, that used to be fine. It used to be completely fine to have mixed messages. Now we're confusing these LLMs which can get opportunities.

for us. So there's a big opportunity cost. But the good news is it doesn't take long. We've got handful of hours just to revamp your online presence. And that can really have a huge upside.

Nick Berry (28:46)

So, no in-between? it's either working for you or working against you.

Joe Gannon (28:50)

I think with AI, the middle's gone. So one of my favorite phrases about what's happening right now in terms of commentary is like, like average, average is wiped out. Like you need to be either the thought leader in your space sharing true original thought, or you could be the, the, on the other side of things, you're, you're documenting, you're showing what you're building. You're curious, you're learning and you're, sharing that in public. But what used to be the middle was people parroting.

advice that wasn't theirs or sharing average takes. And that's been wiped out now.

Nick Berry (29:15)

Yeah.

Average can be

AI can handle average now.

Joe Gannon (29:21)

100%. Like AI didn't replace creators. It's exposed the weaker creators, essentially. So whilst it feels like the whole world has changed around us in many ways, what great content always was hasn't changed at all. Share from lived experience, share your expertise, have an opinion. That is how anyone has grown online. There's more noise than ever, but that still stands to be true.

Nick Berry (29:25)

Mm-hmm.

What about leveraging AI? Any guidance on how to use AI to help you build your brand?

Joe Gannon (29:45)

Yeah, what I mean, everything has to be, I say the best advantage for business owner to use AI for content marketing is to see themselves as being AI enabled. There's never been more ways to capture what it is that you know, and to share your experience. You could upload voice notes of your thoughts, go for a walk, upload voice notes to AI. It can begin to help capture that thinking and to turn it into like a shareable piece of content. Everything has to come from you as the individual, as the expert.

In my opinion, ghost writing as an industry is dead. You should not be hiring someone to be you online. Again, that looked like it worked before because up until now, the majority of people don't post content. So you could get some benefits by just being somebody who posts content that that's gone. Now there's no benefit. The barrier to entry to post content has been completely wiped out with AI. Any of any of us can post daily now with, you know, put anything out there online.

So the question is not that anymore. It's not, you show up or can you not is do you have something to say that is what AI has revealed? How original are you? was always the case, but it's never been, never been clearer. So a lot of people right now who aren't growing and things like that, unfortunately, a mirror has been held up to what they were posting. wasn't that original. Wasn't that unique. The number one criteria and heuristic for everyone listening to this is, your content useful? The second question is, have you defined who this should be useful to? That's the game.

And you can create useful content and help people with a hundred followers, a thousand followers. It just comes down to then your reach and how many people you can sort of cast the net to and help. So the mindset with AI is see yourself as AI enabled that never before has there been more friction removed from AI. And that's the starting point. I personally am not a technical person at all. It's taken me an embarrassing amount of time to record content with a camera, with microphones, despite working with some of the best in the world. I should have like,

Got that skill years and years and years ago, but I was able to teach a whole course in my apartment. Thanks to charge BT, what microphone should I buy? What camera should I buy? So this camera, which was sitting on my shelf, you I turned the camera on the night. I take a frame. I took a photo of me sat in the chair. I take a screenshot. I'll play the charge BT. How do I change the aperture? What is this, this thing called a shutter, shutter size? Um, and it's saying, you know, you should put the plant in the background. Should move a little bit to the left.

you should turn off that background light and you should use a key light. That should be 60 % or key lights you have. Okay. It's the brand called go docs. You press this button. You know, we are all enabled now, anyone who was not technical and allowed that to be a barrier with content creation has been wiped out. There's no excuses. and that's incredible. It's so exciting because it means we can all have podcasts. means we can all have YouTube channels. I guess the theme where I'm trying to be really real with this is like, should you have a podcast? Like, should you have a YouTube channel? Should you have a newsletter comes down to your objectives?

If it makes sense for your business has never been a better time to be AI enabled. And that's, that's like stage one. Then it comes down to like, what should your workflow be with AI? Like what could AI do now? What's your role versus, what AI could do and what agents could do. That's like a different topic we can now discuss, but there's never been more opportunity for people who actually have something to say and want to want to say it to share it now with AI, being this accessible tool.

Nick Berry (32:27)

Mm-hmm.

there's more of a place now for methodologies, right? and speaking of methodologies, StrateTree Would you give me a quick overview of StrateTree

Joe Gannon (32:57)

Yeah. So something we teach every client we get to work with. And this really was sort of tried and tested and came from what people needed. But I think one of the biggest blockers people have with content creation is their positioning. it's who am I? Why am I building a personal brand and getting very clear on that? And yeah, the, the strategy is this visual framework. It has four parts and the four parts are the first is really getting clear on your core values. And if you imagine a tree, the core values are the roots of the tree. So this really

is who you are, everything, your, your beliefs, your values is rooted in, in this. So the first two parts are introspective. It's who am I, what makes me different. And that shows up across our businesses, the businesses we choose to do, and ultimately the content we try to be, try and create the test with your core values really is that, for example, if I was scrolling on my phone and I covered Nick Berry's profile photo and his name, I could only see his post. Are there signs?

of who Nick is versus like another business coach, for example, another, another entrepreneur with multiple businesses. Why is Nick Nick? And we have to be intentional to get clear on this because it should show you through all of our content. The roots of the tree will, no, we'll, we'll, come across with everything. So we have very clear with people that call values. Why are you trying to do this? Who are you online? And it's usually a really fun exercise to do that. The second thing is the trunk of the tree is your parcel brand statement. So you want to be intentional.

And this, this ties into your positioning to help these LLMs know who you are is to come up with pretty much a content elevator pitch. So you should be able to say who you are online, who you help, and then how. So to your point about a method on the bet, one of the best things we can all do is really synthesize our experience into some sort of signature framework. So you should say, you know, I help you know, your ICP to get X result via your method.

So Nick, you have your business alignment system. So it's like, I, you know, I'm an American entrepreneur. I've had multiple businesses in X industry. I, I help service-based entrepreneurs to double their impact. And I do that with my business alignment system. And that's the pieces to include and you refine it until the language is really empowered for you. Once you've done these first two stages of your core values and your personal brand statement, it's clear to you, you have internal clarity. If you're not clear on why you're doing this, how on earth can your audience be clear?

On your content, your power to brand. And why do you want clarity? Well, if someone's sees your content in their feed and then not a perfect fit, they can, they can put it in front of someone who needs that content, who needs that message. Right. So content that is saved content that is shared. These are some of the most powerful metrics to these algorithms that we are high quality in our content creation. So if I didn't have a business, but I know that Nick has the business alignment system and my friend is a struggling entrepreneur.

I can go, Hey, I think you should chat to Nick. You should check out this LinkedIn profile. Here's some of his content. Here's some of his posts. Here's his website. So when we have internal clarity, helps us to be clear externally as well. And most businesses, service-based businesses obviously grow by referrals. So that's just a no brainer to get this right. And the last two pieces where people usually start. the third stage then is the, the branches of a tree and these are your content pillars. what are the reoccurring themes and messages you're to come back to time and time again?

A mistake would be to have a tree with 10 branches because to what we described earlier, if you talk about 10 different categories of content, it's going to be really confusing to your audience about what it is that you do. Most people start with content pillars, but they haven't done that internal work first. And then after the content pillars are set, the branches, the tree, we have topics, which are the leaves of the tree. So once we've done that work to get these first three parts done,

We have, we have a visual for this. We'll share with you. It's definitely easy to show and not to just talk about, but the topics and the leaves of the tree. So once you've graduated to this perspective, that's when you can identify around 10 categories of messages that you know, your customers or your prospects, your audience want from you and what you want to share. And at that point, with all of this work, pre done and done upfront, you can exist at the stage where you just live at the stage of content ideas.

And with AI, can say, right, here's my brand. Here's who I help. Here's how I help them. And you can use AI at that point to jam on content ideas. And I think even a year ago, the biggest thing that business owners struggle with and entrepreneurs struggle with is what should I post today? If you're in reactive mode of your content, like I haven't posted today, my God, I got to post on LinkedIn in an hour's time. What do I post? If you're in that, if you're living in that world right now, it is so solvable. but you're not going to build a personal a brand that compounds.

You're just throwing content into the wind, which is forgotten. It's never going to be memorable. It's never going to help your business. But when you do this, the other three stages, you can live with that, live in that world where you literally are just coming up with, with ideas for content. You go for a walk. You have a great conversation. You look at your StrateTree Does this match up with my positioning? Should I talk about this topic based on my goals based on my personal brand statement? You have all of the thinking done and you get to just enjoy the creative part of all of this.

Nick Berry (37:43)

which sounds fantastic for someone who's found themselves going through all the pains that you're talking about. It's like,

Joe Gannon (37:44)

You

Nick Berry (37:49)

if you're all right with it, would like shift away from the education for a second and just kind of into the mind of an expert

owner and some of the

relatable situations that you've gone through as you've been building your business

Joe Gannon (38:03)

100%. I think business owners have a lot of friction in creating like bottom of funnel content. Um, which, which, uh, I think a lot of us are okay with sharing our thoughts online. If you've, if you've begun posting content, you're used to kind of sharing things that happen to you in your thoughts. think bottom of funnel content is the biggest opportunity, which is content, which can convert for you. So this could be case studies. could be testimonials. And I think the most untapped type of content for an entrepreneur is to.

take the time to create those case studies, talk to their customers, get testimonials and allow other people to sort of market for you what it is that you do, right? Like we all know that we'd rather hear a review from a true customer than just hear the business or the brand say how great they are. And I think right now we all need to be sort of friction seekers because so much of content creation has been made easy. So if you're gonna spend four hours a week on content creation,

One of the best things you can do is to really look back at the great results you've already had and to package that up into content. This friction is not always easy. You have to interview maybe a client or get some reviews or really sit and think like, what is the through line? What is my method? If you don't have a method right now, I have really, really encourage you to create like a signature framework you can be known for. You can become a category expert and it can be something which people can share.

And that can work for you. That still is the real work. And I appreciate that this is not the entrepreneurs like so objective or job. think all of the, the, the pressure around this is that they've got a business to run and sometimes content can be a distraction. But if you truly just live only in bottom of funnel content, no matter what size, audience you have, no matter how many followers you have, that can really have real world benefits. and I.

offer a service you do too. think a lot of people need a larger why as to the doing any of this. But if you have helped even one person go from a point of pain and you've solved it and you've had a transformation, if you just imagine and ask yourself how many thousands of people out there could you also help who just don't know about you, who just don't know how you could help. And like that gets my tail up every time I haven't posted for a week and things like that. If you really realize that

You have information and expertise that someone else needs and content creation is this vehicle, which is free to do by the way. Yes, it takes time, but it's free. It's unbelievable. That's the opportunity. and if, if you can't find time for it, I you need to reflect on the why of your personal brand. Think about your core values. Think about the personal brand statement. Even if you just do the first two stages of the strategy, you're going to come up with a strong why as to why you should shop and be, and be public facing.

Nick Berry (40:34)

I'm taking a lot of notes here.

Joe Gannon (40:35)

And

I've been there too. I have a business and I have, I run a personal brand agency. I've worked with some of the best and I've had periods of time where I'm not posting. I totally get it. And at that point, if time is the issue, you need to position yourself to point a point of leverage. You don't have to do this yourself. Even if you just use chatGPT as a thought partner, one of my favorite things to do when I have no time at all is to just go for an hour walk, get up charge BT, go on voice mode and just talk, talk, talk at it. So there's never been more methods to do this.

But of course, if an entrepreneur hasn't established how a personal brand can help their business, then it is a distraction. It is a distraction. You shouldn't be doing it. You should just be focused on your business. But if you know that it can help, you don't need to understand what system can help you individually.

Nick Berry (41:16)

Yeah, if it's part of your strategy and you're not able to get to it to execute it, then like that's one problem. If you aren't doing it because you don't see how it fits in your strategy or you don't have a strategy, that's a different problem. Either problem needs to be solved, but if you find yourself in one situation and you're not gonna fix it by trying to solve the other.

Joe Gannon (41:35)

the cool thing is entrepreneurs like, like, mean, Nick, you've been coaching me now for like three and a half months. Like the amount of times I've come to you with like emotions or feelings or like I'm in a situation and like, this is how I feel. And like, I'm, I'm in this new territory and I've got these battle scars from the personal. He's, you know, every entrepreneur has, if you're still in a business and you're like still kicking, even if you're kicking and screaming, but you have a business, you have interesting stories to tell.

And a lot of us, all we need to do is open our calendar, look at the last two weeks. Who have we spoken to externally? Who have we spoken to internally? Start with documentation. Like Gary Vee has said this like five years ago, document, don't create. That is the formula for any entrepreneur. You do not need to, if you're sitting here and agonizing over what your posts should be, you're completely missing the trick. Like you need to look backwards in retrospect at what you're already doing. We are already thinking about, and it literally is just sharing pretty much your, your journal online.

don't show everything. It comes down to what is your strategy? What are the content putters? That is the filter of should I share this? Yes or no. Like, does this, do these content putters relate back to my personal brand statement, which is my content elevator pitch? Like, does this make sense? Is this, is this strategic? that is the sort of questions to ask, but it shouldn't be this like whole new activity. It really should just be documenting what we're doing. My, my dream, if we go to the extreme, like imagine

If Neuralink, Elon Musk with Neuralink, imagine if every thought that we have, which could be content, just got connected and integrated to LinkedIn. Like if there's a Neuralink to LinkedIn connection, because half of us have these ideas for content. It's just congestion. We go for a walk, we get 10 ideas. We sit back at our desk, we're firefighting again, and we don't capture that inspiration. Yeah. So it's like.

And I think there's a paradox where on with personal branding for entrepreneurs in particular, that the people with the most to say, unfortunately don't have the time to say it. And those who maybe do have the time are filling on news feeds with all of this, all of their thoughts. and, I'm just passionate to bridge that gap. I want to help experts share their voice online. And it, pumps me up as you can tell.

And yeah, you've been a huge unlock for me the last couple of months to get that fire back. So, anything from this point onwards, think the beauty of podcasts and content is everything's timestamped. So, you know, for the time, time of this conversation, like I've got my fire back and I put a lot of that to you. And if from this point, we see some external looking success and like, you know, people go, like, you've had a couple of breakthroughs or the business is doing well. Then I I would say that's from my work with you. So thank you for that.

Nick Berry (43:58)

it's my pleasure.

Nick Berry (43:59)

So where do we need to go to get more information?

Joe Gannon (44:02)

I have a free training for your audience, Nick. So, ⁓ if the StrateTree sounded like a good thing that someone wants to do, if you're, if you're sat here listening to this thinking, okay, cool. Like I definitely need to work on my positioning, who I am online. And there's never been more important to do that with these LLMs able to read that information too. I have a free training. We'll put it in the description. it's a 15 minute video. goes through literally what we do with our one-on-one clients. So the first month of a one-on-one client, we understand who they are online.

And we get so specific that once you've done that exercise, you have your content pillars, your ideas for content, but it all stems crucially based on what you're trying to achieve. So I love for your audience to do that. It's completely free. And I really hope that will be a tangible starting point for anyone. And if you're creating content right now, I think that will help really sharpen your knife to understand what can make you unique online.

Nick Berry (44:49)

Joe man, I appreciate You are a fountain of

thank you for taking some time and sharing this information with us.

Joe Gannon (44:55)

All right. Thank you so much.