Growing Your Personal Brand: Why LinkedIn is the Place To Be

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Gus Bhandal, where we talk all about the world of marketing and how to use LinkedIn to grow a trusted personal brand.

Gus is an experienced marketer and has worked for some of the world's largest companies. He now runs his own digital marketing agency and has been since 2017; where he has helped literally thousands of companies around the world with being better on LinkedIn. He is the UK's number one* LinkedIn trainer and offers social media and marketing strategy for business owners, senior executives and corporate teams.

*according to his Mum.

 
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The right balance between personal, professional and sales in your content
How to use LinkedIn for business growth through engagement and outreach
How to curate your LinkedIn audience and manage spam connections


 
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Gus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or X

Check out the M Guru Website

Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook

 
Transcript
Teresa: Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your, Dream Business Podcast. Gosh, like I am not having a good day today. I've got a couple of episodes to record today, so God knows what they're going to be like, but welcome to this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you're having a lovely, lovely week.

So this week. Now I don't wanna put any pressure on, but I've got high hopes for this week because I am interviewing the very lovely Gus who in brackets the marketing guru. And Gus is very funny and we laugh and we see each other. So I'm really hoping that we're gonna have a bit of a giggle today.

Well, you learn some things as well, of course. So please welcome to the podcast, the very lovely Gus. Gus, how are you doing?

Gus: I'm very well, I think I'm even better now that I've heard that ridiculously fantastic, introduction. And it's, but I feel pressure now. I need to be funny.

Teresa: Yeah. It's always hard when people say that, cause I think I'm quite funny.

And then when people go, Oh no, you are really funny. I then feel like I've got to be really funny. I've got to be really funny. I'm much better off the cuff.

Gus: Absolutely. Yeah. It's going to be natural. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Teresa: I did a talk once. I did talk once in Nashville for some, seven figure mastermind, which was very intimidating.

But actually it was amazing and they were all women and they were like, you should do stand up. And I thought there's a very big difference to me coming out with a little funny and actually doing stand up. I'm fairly confident that wouldn't be for me. Fancy being of stand up Gus.

Gus: No way, no, it's yeah, far,...

Today’s episode of the podcast is an interview with Gus Bhandal, where we talk all about the world of marketing and how to use LinkedIn to grow a trusted personal brand.

Gus is an experienced marketer and has worked for some of the world's largest companies. He now runs his own digital marketing agency and has been since 2017; where he has helped literally thousands of companies around the world with being better on LinkedIn. He is the UK's number one* LinkedIn trainer and offers social media and marketing strategy for business owners, senior executives and corporate teams.

*according to his Mum.

 
KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

The right balance between personal, professional and sales in your content
How to use LinkedIn for business growth through engagement and outreach
How to curate your LinkedIn audience and manage spam connections


 
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE
Connect with Gus on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook or X

Check out the M Guru Website

Connect with Teresa on Instagram, LinkedIn or Facebook

 
Transcript
Teresa: Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your, Dream Business Podcast. Gosh, like I am not having a good day today. I've got a couple of episodes to record today, so God knows what they're going to be like, but welcome to this week's episode. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you're having a lovely, lovely week.

So this week. Now I don't wanna put any pressure on, but I've got high hopes for this week because I am interviewing the very lovely Gus who in brackets the marketing guru. And Gus is very funny and we laugh and we see each other. So I'm really hoping that we're gonna have a bit of a giggle today.

Well, you learn some things as well, of course. So please welcome to the podcast, the very lovely Gus. Gus, how are you doing?

Gus: I'm very well, I think I'm even better now that I've heard that ridiculously fantastic, introduction. And it's, but I feel pressure now. I need to be funny.

Teresa: Yeah. It's always hard when people say that, cause I think I'm quite funny.

And then when people go, Oh no, you are really funny. I then feel like I've got to be really funny. I've got to be really funny. I'm much better off the cuff.

Gus: Absolutely. Yeah. It's going to be natural. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Teresa: I did a talk once. I did talk once in Nashville for some, seven figure mastermind, which was very intimidating.

But actually it was amazing and they were all women and they were like, you should do stand up. And I thought there's a very big difference to me coming out with a little funny and actually doing stand up. I'm fairly confident that wouldn't be for me. Fancy being of stand up Gus.

Gus: No way, no, it's yeah, far, yeah, far too much pressure.

I like, I like making people laugh when they don't expect it, when they turn up and think this guy's gonna be funny. That's the moment I'm not funny, basically.

Teresa: And you've been doing some speaking, and obviously, you know, I speak, and I've done funnies. Like, purposely funnies on stage, and some of them haven't landed.

Gus: Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's funny you say that, actually, because a lot of my, I said to somebody the other day, and I shouldn't give away my secrets, but I, I Pre plan my jokes kind of thing. So I know when I do presentations, I know where I'm going to stick something funny in and yeah, sometimes it's kind of, when I write it down, I laugh to myself and I think, this is hilarious.

I'm the funniest guy ever. And when you kind of stand up and say, and the room is all quiet, you have to quickly move on. You're like, okay, cool. That's yeah. Next, next, next item.

Teresa: That is me all over. Like I will do something and I will laugh about myself. Ages, I'd be like, God, I'm hilarious. I will literally like praise myself, pat myself on the back.

God, I'm so funny. But yeah, it is, it is a bit awkward and they don't laugh. I sometimes I have the problem where I don't leave enough of the, I don't let it land fully before I then move on to the next thing. Cause I speak so fast. So that can sometimes be a problem in my world. So just. You know, a little tip for you there, Gus.

Gus: Yeah. Yeah. Just, really wait for people to laugh. Yeah. Yeah.

Teresa: And if they don't get it, maybe follow up with a brrm ch.

Gus: Absolutely. Yeah. That's a good idea. Or I might just have a slide that says laugh, you know, like in the audience.

Teresa: Exactly. Cue laughter.

Gus: Now's the time.

Teresa: I think that is the one, what we should do. That's how they're going to get it. I love it. Gus. Okay. Now we've pitched you up to be a comedian. How about we start, as we always do, by you telling us who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today.

Gus: Wow. Okay. So, I was born in the late seventies in. Yeah. Wolves grave hospital.

I won't go into that. You know, I'm a, I'm a Liverpool,like I support Liverpool, FC and I used to tell people I was born in Liverpool because basically people always say, Oh, how come you support Liverpool? And so I was used to, yeah, I was born in the Paul McCartney hospital, you know, in the seller black children's award, you know, it was the kind of, it was all very made up, you know, you know, Jimmy Tarbuck was the midwife and all that kind of stuff.

But yeah, no, I was born in Coventry, born and bred in Coventry. Spent my life here until I moved to London and started a marketing degree. And at that point it kind of all took off. I tried my hand at nearly every subject going and I failed at everything except marketing. And I thought, okay, maybe I'll, maybe I should make a career out of this.

So that, and that's kind of, yeah, that's where it went on. I spent years working for some large companies, international organizations. I worked for local authorities. I then run a pub and a restaurant for a little while, and then I started my own marketing agency and that's where I've, come and even, even that is niche.

So I, I help businesses with marketing and marketing strategy and all that kind of stuff. But, it starts with LinkedIn. That's kind of where I say to people, right. I'll train you on LinkedIn. I'll get you great on LinkedIn. And then we'll do other elements of the marketing mix.

Teresa: Okay. So a couple of things.

First off, I don't think I've interviewed anybody or they've certainly not alluded to me that has a marketing degree because I have a marketing degree. Did you start your degree in marketing? I started mine in business and then within the first year realized that I wanted to sack everything else off other than the marketing or did you go straight in marketing?

Gus: So, cut a long story short, basically I did business studies as a GCSE. And I thought, Oh, this is pretty cool. But then I wanted to be a lawyer. So then they said, Oh, you should do history for a level. So I did history for a level and I failed it. So I couldn't be a lawyer. So, but then I did also psychology for a level.

So then I thought, right, I'll do psychology at university. And I went to university and it was all biology. Like we were dissecting brains and stuff like that. And I thought, yeah, this ain't, this ain't for me. I started on psychology, I also did a minor in sociology and I hated sociology because there's no wrong answer.

It was just like, it was very wishy washy. It was just like, everything is right and I was like, I'm not gonna, you know, survive in this. And then I moved into law, I thought, Oh, I'll give my hand, you know, try my hand at law. And then I saw how long it was going to take to do a law degree and I thought, forget this.

Teresa: I thought law for a while and then don't forget that.

Gus: Exactly. And then I moved into marketing and that's where I, that's where it became second nature. Cause once I started doing marketing modules, it kind of, for want of a better phrase, it was like, this is so easy. It was like, I go, you know, I can do this standing on my head.

And I think that's the thing when something becomes second nature, it's so much easier to deliver to others as well. Kind of thing. So that's, so I failed at everything else before settling on marketing, basically. So psychology, sociology.

Teresa: What's left?

Gus: I went through the prospectus. It was, it was quite close. It was, you know, I almost got to zebra farming kind of thing. I was that far into the, that's an A to Z joke, by the way. That's for sure.

Teresa: He got it.

Gus: Yeah, good. Yeah, yeah. Cool. But yeah, I got to marketing and I thought, right, yeah, let's try my hand at this. And then I, luckily I stopped there.

Teresa: That is lucky. Cause I think if marketing LinkedIn is niche marketing on the marketing Zebras. Zebra care, whatever the Zebra thing was. Very niche. I'm not sure what the prospects are like for that. I am, I kind of, like I said, I started in a business degree thinking I actually was very good at maths. So I thought I would go down like a finance route and then realize finance had nothing to do with maths.

And it wasn't just adding things up, which was a bit disappointing. So, and then I started, like you, I started doing marketing and going, this is like, I could, yeah, I can do it in my sleep, like get it, I get everything. So yeah, I loved it and I love the fact that I have a degree in marketing. I think for us doing the roles that we do, I know, like you, I don't know what year you did your degree and I don't even think I can remember what year I did my degree, but I know that what they taught me obviously is not the world we live in now.

And websites weren't even like they were a thing, but they weren't like really a big thing that they talked about. However, obviously the, the strategy and the thoughts and stuff behind it is, so I still feel pretty happy that I've got that degree.

Gus: Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same. I think the, the theory will never change, you know, ultimately you're promoting a product or a service for somebody to buy and you want to make a, you know, you want to make a profit.

That's the ultimate, the underlying theory, but the, the purpose of a marketing degree, Not that I want to kind of brag about this, but I went on to study two postgraduate qualifications.

Teresa: You are much better than me Gus.

Gus: Then marketing, mark comms. I'm a member of the chartered Institute of marketing and all that have loads of letters after my name.

But the, the point is that I think a lot, yeah, yeah, I think a lot of people kind of, a lot of other people think that marketing is second nature as well. And it's kind of like, they'll just, they'll just try their hand at something and think, oh, well, you know, I'm now a Facebook specialist, so that makes me a marketer or I can, you know, I can write copy and that makes me a marketer.

And that's not always the case. So I know there are marketers who haven't got a marketing degree that get very, they get, you know, their knickers in a twist about the fact that when I turn around and say, well, actually, no, I've got loads of letters up to my name and I've done all the theory. And, you know, I did marketing before social media was a thing before Facebook or Linkedin or Instagram anything was invented.

Because the theory will never change and I've got, I'm glad that I've got that grounding, basically.

Teresa: And it won't. And I think this is the thing for me, one of my superpowers, and I think this has got to come from my degree is that I can put myself in customer's shoes very quickly and easily. So someone can come to me and go, this is who we work with.

And I can kind of very quickly go, okay, well, this is the type of person I probably am. This is probably what I'm interested in. This is how you probably talk to me. Like. I feel, and I feel like I can shift from one business to another really quickly. And you must've seen this and this episode was definitely not about, slagging off anybody that doesn't have a marketing degree, I can assure you.

However, I used to get, and probably would still get a little bit frustrated in people who. Like, so for instance, I worked with someone who had, she worked for me years ago and she basically was an influencer and she was a travel influencer and she built a very good, successful Instagram. And I used to have a tourism board that we used to do Instagram for.

So she was a perfect match because it was very much in her wheelhouse, very much in her zone of genius. However, Just because someone has built something themselves does not mean they can then go and market anything, because I've marketed, we'll have a market off, right? I've marketed chicken, i. e. processed chicken. I've marketed telescopic slides. So, you know, when you're in a car and you lift the thing and your seat slides forward or slides back. Obviously, I've got a fancy car, so I just press a button, but I remember those cars. Oh, wait. But like, those are telescopic slides. And like, if you've got, if you're pulling out like a big server on big, it's like the, the sliding, like I've marketed stuff like that.

And I think that's what marketing helps us do. We can market stuff like that. What have you, what's your most obscure? Oh, I've got another one as well.

Gus: Wow. What's my most obscure. So I have marketed. A sub region of where I live, I, I always used to work in automotive and advanced engineering and all that kind of stuff.

So that's kind of my background. So it's, I used to work in vehicle rental. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I essentially, I marketed Mercedes Sprinters and Ford Transits. Nice. And I was nominated for an award, which was called the Tranny Award. But Tranny is an abbreviation of transit, just so everybody knows. So, for example, thankfully I didn't win. I didn't wanna say that

Teresa: That's a niche award. To be fair.

Gus: It's a very, it's a very niche award. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad I didn't win, so I didn't put on my cv. I'm a winner of a tranny award. That would be very strange. So, yeah, and I, you know, it's, it's all that I used to work in motor sport and et cetera.

So vans, cars, you know, motor sport, all that kind of stuff. So I don't, I don't think there's anything too obscure, although I used to work for a local authority. That's pretty obscure in yourself.

Teresa: Yeah. I've done marketing for children's care homes. I mean, that's random. I also worked in the car industry.

I worked for a company that bought, this is interesting, our lives might have crossed Gus, although I'm a bit older than you, I think. I worked for a company that bought ex rental cars and sold them to dealerships. So they would go to someone like enterprise and buy as they all like, cause obviously rental cars can only be on their books for so long and then they have to be gone because they get too old.

Like when we say, oh, they're like six months old, they would buy like hundreds of them. And then we would sell them to dealerships or not dealerships, independent dealerships all around the country. And then I've also marketed adult toys. I've done it all Gus.

Gus: You mean like playstations and stuff? No, no, no, don't, no, stop that. I get it.

Teresa: Yeah. Not, not what I mean. No, it was fascinating. It was, but it's funny because this is the thing we're trained in marketing to go there's a product, there's a customer, there's a need, there's a pain point. There's a like, and just put our marketing thing on it. So it almost kind of doesn't matter what the product, who the customer or any of that, you just put your kind of blueprint back on it and go, okay, how does this work?

Gus: Yeah, absolutely. I think all marketers, all proper marketers have a marketing toolkit, like a marketing blueprint that they will kind of, they can overlay onto whatever the product or the service is. And, you know, we can talk about acronyms like the four P's and the seven P's and PESTEL and SOSTAC and DAGMAR all these other kinds of things.

And, you know, and then we intersperse it with a bit of psychology, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs and all that kind of stuff. And, and it all come, you know. And we say all this fancy stuff and use all these, you know, long words and all that kind of stuff, but ultimately it's the blueprint that kind of we overlay onto anything that can then deliver that.

And I think that comes from knowing the theory, knowing the stuff behind stuff. So we could quite literally market Anything and anyone. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where Eskimos is the favorite one, isn't it? Absolutely. Yeah. And now that we run our own organ, our own businesses, I think that's the thing that we can, whoever comes in, because people always say, well, what's your niche?

And I normally say, well, service industry businesses, which sounds like everybody says that, right. But it's kind of, it doesn't matter if you work in HR or accountancy or wealth management or photography or videography, I can market your business because ultimately I understand the marketing.

Teresa: Yes. Yes. It is. And I think that's why I've never had a niche because, because I can market anything. This is so cool. I don't think I've ever spoken to a marketer like this before, but it's really interesting. Tell me then, and we're going, I did tell you we'd go around whatever direction that we took us and this is taking us a different direction, but I love it. So when it came to your own stuff, because I very.

I'm going to use the word arrogantly and I'm not arrogant, but I think I confidently walked into having my own business and going, but I know marketing so I can market myself no problem. And I couldn't, I found it really hard. How do you find marketing yourself?

Gus: Particularly in the first couple of years of my business, it was, it was really hard.

The reason I started my business was because I left a Long and illustrious marketing career to then run my local pub. And what I discovered was that without social media, without proper marketing, et cetera, I wouldn't...